The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co
by Emmy the Writer
Summary: Lucy never wanted to be a sentinel. She shouldn't be; she doesn't eat with a knife and fork and she can't lift a sword without getting tired. But when a prank goes wrong, that's how she ends up, subject to a group of very, very strange people.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is my newest and very meticulously planned story. As for genre, think '_The Brotherhood'_, less rape, more fighting, with nelves… and comedy. But then think again.

The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co

Chapter One

"Elune's knickers," Lucelia Dawnfeather cursed under her breath as she found that a knot had somehow appeared midway along the tripwire she was setting up. She unhooked the end she had just spent ten minutes fiddling with and undid the tie, being careful to keep her eyes trained on the nearly invisible thread.

It was the thick of night, but Darnassus seemed never to change, ignoring the cycles of daylight, eternally closeted in a twilight-drenched corner of Azeroth. Lucy's eyesight was, as was the same with all night elves, excellent, though lately she had been straining it a bit too much, sneaking around in very dim conditions. Despite constantly sneaking out to play tricks, Lucy was chubby, for a night elf, and so unfit that even walking around Darnassus taxed her mostly ignored muscles. She liked her life, though, one of relative luxury with no responsibilities. Her doting parents made it even easier.

Tonight was her biggest trick, however. She had suspended a long tripwire from one side of the only open entrance to the city to the other, the thread unnoticeable unless you were expressively looking for it. She'd done her research; the sentinels around this area had a twenty-minute shift change lag, which she was exploiting now.

"Finally." She breathed out the breath she had been unconsciously been holding and stood up, dusting her cloth trousers off. Smiling wickedly, she hopped over the low wire and looked back once, snickering at the thought of the parade of guards that would trip over it tomorrow when they finished their march from Shadowglen. It would be hilarious, and everyone would know she'd done it, but there would be no evidence, because her parents wouldn't even ask her. They were like that, far too soft on their only daughter.

"Well, who do we have here?" A bright light shone onto her face as she tiptoed around the edge of the high, white wall, just a foot of grass between her and the pond. Startled, Lucy jumped and slipped, but was caught by a grip of iron and hauled upwards before she hit the water, coming face to face with a vision of hell itself. "Caught you, little troublemaker."

It was a sentinel, with closely cropped grey hair and a predatory smirk on her lips. "Wait until everyone hears that the famous miscreant Lucelia Dawnfeather got caught."

"Lemme go," she argued, wiggling in the sentinel's inhumanly strong hold. "You got no right-"

"Your grammar is appalling, also…" The sentinel sighed and pulled Lucy's hands behind her back, effectively stopping her from doing anything at all. A panic set in as the sentinel roped them together.

"Hey, what're you doing?" She asked obviously. "You can't just take me… wherever you're going!"

"I think you'll find I can." The sentinel smiled and led her off the bank, striding twenty times faster than Lucy even ran, pulling the frenzied young elf behind her. Through the streets of Darnassus she trailed, swearing with her limited vocabulary at the grey-haired monster sentinel, who merely smiled and laughed at her foolish antics. They ended up in front of the city guard's housing, where much to Lucy's chagrin, she was dragged past groups of chatting sentinels, getting ready for the shift change. They looked at her and raised their elegant eyebrows, tittering behind their hands. Everybody in the city knew the illustrious Lucelia Dawnfeather: prankster and brat extraordinaire.

"When I said 'go and patrol for trouble', Grey, I was talking about hostile horde, burning legion or scourge. Not tweens." Lucy was placed roughly in a nice enough chair in front of a big, desk that was hewn from the same wood as the floor. Behind it sat a sentinel, out of armour, with her bare feet up on the table, leaning back on her own comfy chair. Lucy knew that the city guard wasn't unmoving and stony-faced _all_ the time, but she hadn't quite suspected this.

"Oh, I assure you, she's trouble enough," her captor, who had been referred to as Grey by the woman in charge, rolled her eyes and leaned on the back of the chair. "Setting up a tripwire by the main arch."

"No doubt that would have been highly amusing." The leader turned to look at Lucy. "I have to confess that you have surpassed yourself. That doesn't, of course, mean that you won't be subject to a punishment."

Punishment? Lucy didn't like being punished. Usually, if her parents asked her to do something she didn't want to, she'd either throw a tantrum or stomp out of the house or to her room. She didn't reckon that these women were the type to let her storm out. Lucy swallowed apprehensively, thinking that she'd blown her eight-year streak of petty pranks.

"You can call me anything in your word bank, but my temperance prefers ma'am or miss. Tanalia here has been hot on your heels for the last couple of weeks, and in that time has produced quite a disturbing portfolio." She rummaged in a drawer on her side of the desk and pulled out a thick folder of stiff parchment. "Things don't bode well for you, Lucelia. May I call you that?"

"Y-yes," Lucy stumbled over her words, looking at all of the reports in her file. She glared at the beastly woman Tanalia, who grinned back.

"Yes what?"

"Um… yes you can?" the leader's eyes narrowed and Tanalia took it as a sign, swiftly backhanding her across the face. "Ow! What the hell did you do that for?"

"It's 'yes, ma'am." Tanalia said threateningly. "Treat your superiors with respect."

"Oh… yes, ma'am, then." She cringed and wondered if the slap would leave a bruise. Not like she hadn't had bruises before, but her parents would fuss over it.

"Good. Now, Lucelia… petty theft from market stalls, four instances of meddling with external affairs, obstruction of justice… and now a major impediment of city plans, all in these past two weeks we've been watching. Do you know what would happen to you if you were an adult?"

Lucy thought for a minute. "Uh… I'd go to jail?"

"Correct." Ma'am smiled grimly and tapped her file. "There's not much threat from the horde any more, so we're taking inter-community issues more seriously."

"You can't send me to jail, though!" Lucy protested. "I'm still a child… and…"

Ma'am's lips quirked. "Correct again, but we are authorized to oversee minor reprimands."

"Oh." She paled considerably. "So… I have to do chores?"

"Not quite. I'm giving you…" Ma'am looked over her file again. "Hmmm… three or four months of community service, Grey?"

"Five."

"Six it is, then." Lucy gasped.

"Six months? I'm not doing six months of… whatever!"

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not." Lucy leant back on her chair, feeling cheeky again. "Sorry… no I'm not _ma'am_."

"Would you like Tanalia to accidentally misplace her hand quite quickly at your face again?" Ma'am asked smugly, and Lucy was quick to shake her head. She had an aversion to pain deeply routed in her aversion to… everything she didn't like. "Well then, I'd suggest you agree to the terms."

"But… I don't want to do six months of crap! None of the stuff I did was _really _bad, right?" Lucy asked desperately. "Like… shouldn't you give the service to someone who… I don't know, killed someone?"

"Those ones aren't going to see the sky for a while, little miss. I wouldn't trust them with a rake." She pulled out a form and a quill, making three small marks. "You need to sign this form in the three places that I have marked out, and then you can begin your hours. And besides, you don't have anything else to do- you've finished your initial schooling…" Ma'am looked at her file. "Second bottom in your class of seventeen, impressive… repeated your fifth year due to truancy. No interest in training in any class, no interest in following your mother or your father…"

She slammed the folder shut. Tanalia walked around to untie Lucy's hand so that she could sign the paper. "Your parents have already agreed… look here, _both _of their signatures! My, my, what a lucky girl you are." Tanalia thrust the quill into her hand.

"What?" Lucy looked at the paper, dumbfounded. Her parents would _never_ do anything against her. They'd gone behind her back, the… the…! She didn't have a word in her vocabulary big enough to express her rage. "I'm not signing this."

"We could do a deal." Ma'am's eyes began to sparkle mischievously. "What, to you, lies in your future, miss Dawnfeather?"

"I dunno… stuff."

"'Stuff' will not help anyone. You have a very long life ahead of you, and you can't possibly stay in Darnassus getting fat and playing silly tricks for all of it. Instead of six months of public humiliation, I'll shorten it to one week. How does that sound?"

"What's the catch?"

"At the end of that week, you'll go to Ashenvale with Tanalia and her rotation. To train as a sentinel."

"Elune's nipples, are you _pissing_ with me?" Lucy outright laughed. "_Me_, be a Sentinel? You've taken too many blows to the head, I think."

"Language, miss." Ma'am warned her. "I can't say that it was an easily made offer. Everyone here laughed their glaives off at me."

"Then why offer in the first place?" Lucy asked, perplexed. Her, be a sentinel? That was laughable, at best. She wasn't tall or graceful with perfect a perfect muscle-to-softness ratio and an eternally superior gaze. She was normal height, normal build and, if she was honesty, a little tubby. Plus she couldn't even lift a sword without her arms and shoulders burning. The idea of her being part of the elite fighting force that protects night elves all over Kalimdor was… stupid.

"Because you're clever, Lucelia." Tanalia flicked her on the forehead, but Ma'am merely rolled her eyes and continued. "You're not smart; in fact, you're a dullard. But you're quick-witted and very good at what you do. Even Grey had to shadow you for two weeks before you got complacent enough to get caught. Training can sort out the rest."

"You're serious, aren't you?" Lucy asked. "Ma'am."

"Deathly so." She replied somewhat sarcastically. "But think on it. I don't like to see the youth waste their lives, especially when they aren't eternal any more."

Lucy looked down at the contract and though about it. That was hard, because she wasn't someone naturally prone to inflection. Her mind worked fast when it came to planning tricks and drawing out plans, yes… but she couldn't apply her enthusiasm for that to anything else. And then, she thought about her life- what was she actually planning to do once she got older? She'd spurned the few offers from trainers already and had merrily waved off most of her childhood friends when they'd left for Shadowglen (well, she'd been merrily waving because they were about to be rained on by little pellets of dye, her parting gift), thinking that she had no need to learn such things.

Perhaps, she thought, she should go. Then again, she was naturally lazy. Just looking at Tanalia and her poise, her grace perfected by years of training, her inhuman strength… she would never be any of those things, she knew. She wasn't naturally strong or beautiful or anything that all of the sentinels seemed to be.

"I can't be a sentinel," she explained as though it were the most obvious thing in the word. "I sleep until midday and I don't use a knife when I eat… which I do, a lot… and I hate exercise…" she paused going through a list of her faults. "I don't talk right, I hate taking orders… um, I… I like shiny things. I hoard them. Like a magpie. I can't hold a goblet right and I-"

"As impressive as your list of faults is…" Tanalia said in her silky voice. "And as long as I'm sure you could continue, we still need you to sign for your service or agree to our deal."

"But I-"

"Lucelia," Ma'am said in a nice voice. Lucy grimaced as she realized they were playing good-guard bad-guard. "Make your choice."

"I…" she looked at the sheet and the pen in her hand. Lucy, being… Lucy, let laziness win over common sense. "I don't want to do the six months."

Quicker than her sore eyes could catch, the first paper was whisked away and a fresh one was pushed under her nose. This one was longer… and also already signed by her parents. "The sold me out!" she realized. "How long have these been signed?"

"Since you first pelted that young gentleman… Fahrahrah, I think, with nightsaber dung. We just had to catch you."

"…This is a set-up, then."

"Just sign the form, girl." Tanalia snapped, becoming irritable.

And so, Lucelia Dawnfeather signed her life away.

-

"Scrub harder, wench!" Kolya giggled and the little ones behind her fell about themselves laughing. They sat, at their leisure, on one of the riverside walkways that wound around Darnassus, dipping their feet in the crystal clear pools, watching a damp and unhappy Lucy scrubbing barnacles off the side of the bridges. It was the worst day of her life to date. She had been woken up at half past six and given a set of itchy, androgynous clothes that she was to wear to identify her as someone doing community service. Now, as far as night elves go, Lucy did not have a particularly anally retentive sense of fashion, but she was perceptive enough to know that neon orange and purple did not mesh well.

Tanalia, who she was now convinced hated her, had given her a pair of gloves and a chisel and shown her the bridge. She was expected to have this side spotless by nightfall. It had been all right until about midday, when her usual crew of admirers and assorted miscreants had come to see and laugh at her. She had gotten caught, and the first rule of doing tricks was _not to get caught_. They sat taunting her, eating sugared pastries and drinking milk, chatting idly, coming up with new tricks to play.

Tricks that, Lucy thought bitterly, she would not get to help with. Already a new leader of the dozen or so of them was emerging with her removal: a stocky little runt of an elf called Pylli, who had caused a stir by superseding Kolya, Lucy's appointed second. She didn't really care for the hierarchy any more, though, seeing as she'd be out of here for good in six days. Six days of humiliation would probably diminish the glut of pride she'd accumulated, though, which was probably Tanalia's intention.

As she hacked another nasty barnacle off the white stone, Lucy frowned and muttered under her breath, cursing everything she could think of with as many funny body parts of Elune she knew. After a while, though, that didn't comfort her. The little ones eventually got bored of laughing at her and ran off to do whatever trick they were planning, but Pylli and Kolya stayed to talk to her.

"So, the great Lucy is leaving us, hmm?" Pylli raised his long and elegant eyebrows, a move every night elf but Lucy seemed to be able to do without looking stupid.

"Yep," she 'accidentally' let a chip of barnacle ping at his face. "I'm going to be a sentinel."

"And I'm Illidan's daughter." Kolya snorted.

"You are his… eighth cousin's granddaughter." They sat in silence, trying to figure that out, but in the end they all gave up. "Seriously."

"Lucy, you're not going to be a sentinel. You're… at least a foot too short, to start. _And_ you don't use a knife when you eat." The younger girl was about to start listing her negative qualities when a shadow loomed over them.

"Not trying to help her, are we?" Tanalia asked, leaning over the side of the bridge. "What kind of progress do you call this? You're supposed to do the whole bridge by tonight!"

"You said just this side!" Lucy argued, definitely sure that she had said the one side.

"Did I?" She smirked. "I meant both sides. Now you'll have to double your speed, at least, to be done by midnight."

"But-" By that time, Tanalia was already miraculously at least twenty metres away. "Elune's nostrils, I hate that woman."

"That's The Torturer." Pylli said in slight awe and massive fear. "The bane of a thousand children having fun."

"The Torturer?" Lucy snorted. "Agreed, she's a bit of a furbolg… but not a torturer."

"You're siding with her? Suck-up!" Kolya swung down from the bridge so she was right next to Lucy. "You really are going to leave, aren't you?"

Lucy nodded and felt sad. Koyla, while not her best friend, had followed her loyally since she could toddle, with hero-worship that became friendship as she got older. Leaving her behind would hurt, and Lucy didn't like hurt… but she was leaving, and that was that. A mostly-unused sense of responsibility flaring, she worked furiously at the bridge while imparting her wisdom to the two younger elves.

"Remember to always check the guard shifts… and that once a trick is finished, it isn't, because you still have to not get caught."

"Can I have your penknife?" Kolya asked.

Lucy bit her lip. "It's supposed to go to the new leader… I got it from Iridolan, and he had it from, um… Yerria."

"They're both grown-ups now." Pylli said with a certain disdain. "You're going away to become a grown-up, too, aren't you, Lucy?"

"Not if I can help it." She winked and smiled, but her heart was breaking. She remembered when Iridolan had left them to become a druid… two years ago now. And Yerria… she'd already completed her priestess training. She was _old_. "Pylli, why do you want to be the leader?"

He looked embarrassed. "You noticed?"

"I did elect Kol as my second, but you claimed leader when you found I was leaving."

"Kol isn't good at talking like you. She has ideas, but she can't tell us them proper. I just thought…"

After smashing a barnacle to pieces, which provided a few seconds of silence for him to trail off, Lucy opened her mouth again. "So you're claiming Kol's ideas because she can't tell them properly?"

"No, I never said that!" Pylli said indignantly, and then realized that was exactly what he had been doing. "Oh… have I been bad, Lucy?"

"Yes." She cuffed him gently over the head; his dark purple hair messing up more than it was already. "But I forgive you. I'm going to make it different now. There will be two positions at the top… a planner and a speaker. The planner gets the knife, because it had rulers and compasses and useful things for planning."

"Then what does the speaker get?" He asked. She understood the want for a physical representation of his power within the little group. She thought hard for a while, pre-occupying herself with more scraping, before deciding. She was changing the hierarchy for the first time in ages, which she wasn't entirely sure about doing. "The speaker… he or she gets this, but only on their birthday. They have to be underspeaker to the previous speaker until then, because then they can get taught how to speak properly."

From her pocket she took the brooch that she seldom went without, given to her on her tenth birthday by Iridolan, who in her ten year old eyes, had been a god. He wasn't the leader then; he was far too young, but he was the best tricker she knew. Personally, she thought, even better than Yerria, but she daren't say that in case unkind ears were listening. The brooch itself had been handmade by him from the bendy wood of the willow trees that grew by the river, wound around a metal frame that had the pin on. It was made in the shape of a flower.

She handed it to Pylli and he turned it over and over in his hands as though it were made of gold. Then, he burst out crying, which Lucy didn't expect because she was no particularly friendly with him.

"Pylli? Are you okay?"

He sniffed. "Y-yes, Lucy… it's just that I remember Iri leaving, and everyone was quite sad… but everyone loves you so much, you always did the best tricks."

"And you'll do better in your time, I'm sure of it." She had finished about half of the first side of the bridge by now, and it was mid-afternoon. "I have a dare. No, not a dare… a rite. Like a graduation."

"What?" Kol's eyes got big. She loved applying her mind to challenges, puzzles, anything. "Like a thing that we have to do to be speaker and planner?"

"Yes. You have to do a hundred tricks in seven days, and each trick has to be bigger than the other, leading to an absolutely _huge_ one at the end."

Kolya immediately began planning that while Pylli fingered the brooch and bit his lip. "That's impossible."

"No. It's easy. There's ten of us, excluding Lucy, and if we all do one trick per day… the youngest can do the least one, then it goes up by age."

The two of them thought on that in silence for a bit while Lucy applied herself to scrubbing. She had just done her job as a leader properly, not just because she was oldest and best at tricks… she felt quite happy with herself, and she hadn't made anyone trip up or cover them with dye. This was quite a new sensation.

"We have to get started now. We've already missed most of the first day." Kolya and Pylli wished her farewell and she watched them go fondly, thinking that she'd left her charges in good hands. Tired already, she started picking at the hard-shelled mollusks with renewed vigor, causing passers-by to jump slightly when they heard her grunting with the effort.

By nightfall, she had finished that side of the bridge and moved to the other. Lucy was lucky that nobody was around when she lost her footing and toppled into the water, causing her to feel about three stone heavier than she actually was and look like a drowned rat. By the time she was done with that particular bridge, it was nearer to three in the morning and she was aching all over. Her arms would drop off as she slept, which would be for a mere three hours… Lucy was quite glad she only had a week of this to go. Six months would have killed her.

-

Evidence of the seven day trick-a-thon was spattered, smeared and otherwise proudly professed around Darnassus. You couldn't walk under an arch without getting wet, dyed, tripping over or having your facial features swapped for the person who had walked through before you. Far from being alarmed (or amused, for that matter) the citizens of Darnassus welcomed the change from their daily lives, and said a silent prayer of thanks that Lucelia Dawnfeather was leaving. It would be a good time of peace before her contemporaries tried to do anything big.

Lucy herself was having a marvelously miserable time. By the fourth day, she could barely move her arms and had dropped the chisel into the water a total of seven times, meaning she had to dive in an retrieve it each time. Adults would frequent the bridge she was working at that day, smirking, for a chance to see the prankster get her comeuppance. They all knew, though, that her biggest challenges would lie ahead, when she would return with the rotation of the sentinels at the end of the week.

A tradition was soon established; due to all the paint and dye flying everywhere, Darnassus banners became kaleidoscopes of colour. They were swiftly replaced by the children in Lucy's group with banners they'd made themselves, ranging from fauvist swirls of technicolour to plain pieces of linen on which each child had made a handprint in different coloured paint. For that week, the ranks of the little group of pranksters would swell with children of all ages and creeds, eager to cause as much controlled havoc as possible.

Lucy vehemently denied re-stringing the tripwire over the main gate when she was asked, giving all the credit to her group. As luck would have it, she was cleaning the nearest bridge to the city entrance that day and saw the whole spectacle. Tanalia was, of course, not happy, but Tanalia was never happy. She would come and taunt Lucy sometimes, and the young girl idly wondered if she actually did anything useful in her job.

Eventually, the seventh and last day came around, and the whole city woke to a day in which they knew it would be most prudent not to leave their houses at all. Above every door there were charms and petty magics to cause all sorts of havoc, but strangely no children around to giggle and laugh. Traders nervously opened their stalls and trade and commerce began as it usually would, but something was definitely amiss.

"Everyone has gone," Lucy sang in a monotone. "Nobody appears when I call. I'm stuck here on this bloody bridge, scraping barna-caaaaallllssss."

She was quite pleased with it.

That night she had been told to go back to her house and say goodbye to her parents and then meet the returning rotation of sentinels at the guardhouse, dressed for the road. She puzzled at that. Dressed for the road? What did the road want her to dress as? She had asked it, but to no response. Roads, trees, bridges and arches in Darnassus were sometimes partial to an idle conversation, but today they were all silent. There was mischief on the wind.

Kolya and Pylli did not come to visit her and bring lunch, like they had the other days. They were insanely busy coordinating all of the tricks at the fact that the ten people in their group had suddenly become a hundred. There was one thing that they had discussed in depth.

"What are we called?" Pylli asked on the afternoon of the fifth day. "We need a name. And our holiday week-dare-thing needs a name, too."

"Lucy's Badass Bandits?" She'd suggested, to much mirth, but then she thought seriously. "Maybe…" She'd looked at the brooch Pylli wore proudly. "The flower-people?"

"Too girly!"

"The pen-knife people?"

"Lucy, for all your expertise… you suck at naming stuff. No offence." Kolya had rolled her eyes. "How about the Guild of Foolish Youths and Unnecessary Risk Takers?"

"That sounds like a union." Pylli had said. "But I think being a guild would be cool. We could have a tabard and everything. And we have the ten-member minimum."

They thought for a while. Lucy spoke hesitantly. "Why not just the Prankster's Guild? And our week can be the Seven-Day Trick?"

"Simple… but I guess it's with children in. It should be simple. Pylli, you agree?"

He shrugged. "I guess. And we can do that handprint thing for our tabards."

And just like that, Lucy had found herself signing something for the second time that week. She was the third name on the guild charter and would stay an honourary member for life. Pylli had thought of finding Iri and Yerria, but Lucy said they were adults and they had better things to do.

When she'd completely finished the seventh bridge, Lucy had stood on top of it and jumped a little for joy, then wearily trekked back to her house. Her parents weren't home, so she'd taken off the horrible clothes and debated as to what she'd wear. Despite being completely naïve, she knew they would be traveling, so she'd forgone a dress- she didn't really like dresses much anyway. She'd picked fine cloth breeches, a pressed linen shirt with an overcoat and some leather boots. Thinking she looked like an explorer, she'd pulled out her penknife one last time and used every one of the fittings. She'd miss the ingenious little thing, for sure.

Packing a spare set of clothes and a few luxuries for herself into a medium-sized backpack, she hoisted it on her back after a good, hot wash. She's forgone doing anything with her scraggly hair, dark purple like her father's, but with an interesting layer of blue from when she'd been messing around with her mother's inscription materials. It seemed that not even a good wash would get the enchanted stuff out- she'd have to wait until it grew.

Downstairs, she had a last meal by herself, wondering if her parents were actually ever going to come home. Dutifully, when they didn't, she had said goodbye to her furniture instead and walked across the city to the guardhouse.

"Here comes the little miscreant!" She was greeted by Tanalia's dulcet tones, and grimly turned to face the woman she had nightmares about. "Did you say goodbye to your parents?"

"They never came home." She explained. Around Tanalia formed a rank of Sentinels: ten very scary-looking women wearing their armour on top of softer traveling clothes, each with a massive pack, grim-faced and hard-looking. Lucy gulped. With a silent command, the leaving sentinels turned to salute the woman Lucy knew only as Ma'am, then the rest of the barrack, and then turned to leave.

The march across Darnassus seemed to Lucy more like a marathon, each sentinel doing one stride to four of hers. She ended up skipping stupidly in a shuffly sort of jog, being poked from behind by Tanalia, who seemed to have brought a walking stick solely for this purpose. They arrived at the small structure that acted as a portal to the Rut'Theran village and Lucy paused, still needing to give the penknife to Kolya… and she actually found herself wanting to say goodbye to her parents.

"Nobody came to say goodbye, awww." Tanalia cooed at her. The Prankster's Guild in its entirety chose this moment to burst into the scene, all one hundred of them clinging to an Ancient Protector, who stood as tall as twenty of Lucy and as wide as five of her. He or she, it was hard to tell with elementals, had been adorned with so many different flowers that it looked like a mountain made from rainbows. On its head sat Pylli and Kolya, their hair streaking behind them. The assembled just stood in awe for a good minute until Kolya jumped into the Protector's hand and was let down onto the ground, stumbling slightly.

"Lucy." She said loudly, which was pretty amazing for Kolya, who was usually quiet amongst adults (especially sentinels). "Do you have something to give me?"

Lucy took the penknife from her pocket and looked at it forlornly. She offered it out to Kolya, feeling one era of her life end and another start. She was no longer a child, with the relinquishing of the penknife, and it made her sad. She didn't want to cry in front of Tanalia, though. "For you, Kolya Rootwalker, new leader of the Prankster's Guild."

The smaller girl took the penknife from Lucy and cradled it close to her chest. Immediately, the whole guild leapt down from the Protector and came to stand before Lucy. Pylli came out of the throng and the din of child voices and offered her something. It was encased in a linen pouch and he looked practically ecstatic, so she took it warmly and looked inside.

"Elune's- arrgh!" she cried as a puff of darkness powder came out, blinding her momentarily and making her face blacker than Tanalia's heart. Everyone started laughing at her and she realized that this was part of the massive, last prank. They had played it on her. They were worthy to take her place. "Thanks, Pylli."

"No problem." He grinned as she wiped the powder out of her eyes. "Serious, look inside."

Tentative now, she reached inside and pulled out a brooch. It was like the one she had given to Pylli, but entirely wrought in metal, shining in the moonlight. She felt the charm of shininess in it and instantly liked it, already being predisposed to coveting shiny things. The likeness of the flower was plated with seven different colours of what she thought might be mother of pearl; seven petals for the seven colours of a rainbow. Despite herself, her eyes filled with tears. "Thanks, Pylli, for real, no sarcasm. This must have cost a fortune."

"With ninety extra people, it was easy." He beamed at her and they hugged for a moment before he gave her a salute and stepped back, allowing Kolya to talk to her. There was no need for talk; the penknife had been more emotion than the smaller girl could take. The hugged for a long while as the sentinels waited patiently.

"Become a fun grown-up, okay?" She asked, and Lucy promised she would, turning away so the guild would not see her tears.

"You ready, then?" Tanalia asked, bored, but her eyes were not so hard as before.

"Yes." Lucy steeled herself and looked back once. She could have sworn she saw her parents a little way off, but before she could think any more on that, the once-again stern sentinel had prodded her through the pleasingly tingly portal and into the great unknown.

-

A/N: Yes, chapters will be shorter than Brotherhood chapters, because school is starting, blah blah, you've heard it all before. I hope you liked/hated Lucy and felt what her world is like. I have much, much planned out for her in the coming arcs (and yes, arcs plural, not like Brotherhood that really just had the SW invasion arc), so stay tuned for hopefully weekly or fortnightly updates.

~Emmy


	2. Chapter 2

The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co

Chapter Two

Lucy did not seriously believe that Tanalia had tossed her pack into the sea, but as it sunk off the side of the boat, so did her hope that there would be any kind of luxury where she was going. At least she wouldn't have anything to carry, she'd thought, until she'd been presented with one of the massive, heavy-looking packs that the sentinels all carried. As she'd thought, it was so heavy that if she opened it she thought she'd find fat furbolg babies in there, possibly who'd just swallowed bricks.

Lucy also found out that she got seasick.

The Moonspray was a nice boat, and experienced at predicting the sea's moods. The voyage to Darkshore was only an overnight sail, but Lucy thought she'd never, ever eat anything again in her entire life after the first twenty minutes.

She'd found out from another sentinel, Jaria, who was a bit nicer than Tanalia (which wasn't hard) that travel was approximately five days, including the boat trip. _That wasn't so bad_, she thought, _I'm practically an argent champion after a week bridge-scrubbing_. Jaria had laughed at her and told her that bets were being made as to when she'd collapse.

Dejected, she'd spent the boat-ride finding out about what sentinels did. The group she was with were returning to Ashenvale after doing six months guarding Darnassus, and there was a rotation of seven different patrols, three in Darnassus and four in Ashenvale, so nobody had to stay in one place for longer than a around two years. Her training had been described in different ways: some blatant lies ("It's great fun, just like a sleepover, but with swords!) And other horrific truths ("Think Naxxramas but purple with lots of Tanalias."), and so when the boat actually docked in Auberdine, Lucy was rather confused. Still, she marveled at the sight of the sea and the land meeting, which she hadn't seen that much of on the boat, considering she'd been busy throwing up.

"Right, so a furbolg, a blood elf and a naga walk into a tavern, yes?" Someone to her left was telling a joke. The sentinels, while very well-trained, were people as well. They needed down time.

"And?"

"And the blood elf orders a bottle of dragonade, so the naga says: 'Mate, you'd be better off with static electricity from the furbolg's fur if you're trying to get it up!'" Lucy was rather perplexed, but the sentinels were laughing loudly.

Jaria hung back to talk to her. Though the older woman wasn't Lucy's preconception of nice, she was at least sane, unlike Tanalia, and understandable, unlike the jokes the night elves told. "I don't get it."

"What?"

"That joke. Why is it funny?"

Jaria looked at her seriously. "… How old are you, Lucelia?"

Lucy scratched her head. "Well… I graduated initial schooling at sixteen… then spent eight years tricking. That would make me… twenty-four, I think?"

"You're not joking, are you?"

"No," she frowned. "Why, is that weird?"

"I know some twenty-four year-olds who've been deployed to Northrend… and you've only just stopped playing pranks. We may live a while… a long while, compared to some other races, but twenty-four is still a bit old to be so young-minded."

Lucy took offence at that. She thought that Jaria was calling her an idiot (which she was) or naïve (which she… was, too, most definitely). "How old are you, then?"

"I celebrated by three hundred and sixth birthday three weeks and one day ago." She said with a disconcerting certainty. "Time is more important than you consider it, Lucelia."

"I know, I know… we're not immortal any more, each day is precious… I went to school. I did my fifth year twice. I heard the lectures."

As seemed to be the general reaction to her saying something stupid, Jaria clouted the side of her with a gauntleted hand, making her bruise from Tanalia hurt again. Lucy realized something.

"You're like three hundred years older than me, but you look like you could be my older sister."

"Did you not pay _any_ attention in classes?" Jaria tutted and adjusted one of her spauders before continuing. "Adulthood for a night elf is at around one hundred and twenty, give or take a few years. Thanks to the Ancients, we remain strong and young for many centuries. Some night elves live to see two millennia, though that is rare."

Lucy was suddenly quite dwarfed by how young she was. "I'm a baby."

"Yes, and don't forget it." Jaria gave her a rare smile. "Now stop talking, it will help you walk faster."

The young elf groaned and shifted the heavy pack back up her aching back and plodded on through the gloom. The novelty of being out of Darnassus was already completely evaporated, leaving a depressed and hungry girl with a heavy bag and a distinct lack of friends. The troupe marched from dawn to dusk, and broke their fast in the morning with salty bread and dried meats, then only stopped in the evenings for thin stews. The sentinels, in Lucy's time with them, killed only one animal; a sickly-looking deer with sunken eyes and unnaturally greenish fur. It was purified in boiling water and they ate spit-roasted. Lucy's stomach was constantly grumbling and her bones protesting, but her pride was bigger than any of these hurts. She would _not_ win Tanalia seventy silver, even if she had to crawl through Ashenvale.

Despite this resolve, as they left Darkshore and came into Ashenvale, Lucy nearly toppled off a small sandbank out of exhaustion. Cursing and shaking sand out of her underwear, she jogged to rejoin the back of the group, hoping nobody had noticed.

Halfway into Ashenvale, they were attacked by a massive bear, the likes of which Lucy had only seen a rare few travelers through Darnassus riding. She watched in awe as the sentinels formed one sleek, streamlined unit, surrounding the bear and each plunging a sword or glaive into its vital areas. None were harmed and the bear was humanely taken down… but the grace with which they had killed frightened the younger elf. They were like robots, cogs in some king of gnomish machine, single-minded. Not for the first time, she seriously doubted her decision to forego six months of backbreaking and derogatory work, wondering what she was getting herself into. Ma'am had said she was clever, but the self-doubt of any young girl was digging away at her self-esteem, which probably needed it, but was still in danger of becoming crumbly, like the biscuits they ate in the mornings.

"We reach Silverwing Grove tonight," Jaria informed her, with quite a great deal of relief. "And I get two weeks off."

"What do I do?" Lucy asked, having had numerous fantasies and multiple nightmares about training as a sentinel. Jaria merely smiled mysteriously at her and told her that she'd see, which, in Lucy's experience, never boded well.

Upon pushing through some undergrowth (_some_ taken to mean _massive amounts_) the group sighted home: the fiercely defended, fiercely occupied and generally fierce sentinel settlement of Silverwing Grove. Lucy couldn't keep her eyes in her head. There were so many women, girls, swords, purple things and crates that she didn't know where to start. Being Lucy, she started by honing in on the shiny moon that hung above a nearby tent. In fact, the whole place seemed to be made with tents; a city of blue, purple, black, green and silver, covering an impressive area.

"Welcome to Silverwing Grove, Lucelia Dawnfeather. Home sweet home, soon enough." Tanalia spread her arms at the expanse in front of them, but the introduction was unnecessary. And besides, Tanalia was angry that she'd lost her bet. "If you'd follow me." She stood at attention and all the sentinels saluted to her. "Hawk Squad, dismissed!"

The sentinels remained rigid for about three seconds before dissolving into squeals and laughter and sighs of relief, some hugging their friends who had come out of their tents to see them, others running off to tents themselves, and one or two just breathing a lot for a while and floating off. Tanalia whisked Lucy off to a very big, very shiny tent, which was brightly lit with the little whispy balls of white light that Darnassus also favoured. Once inside, they walked in on a group of women talking in low voices, moving little blocks around a big board. For a brief and confusing moment, Lucy thought they were playing a game that many teens in Darnassus enjoyed, called Hammerwar, but on closer inspection the board was a map. They must be planning some kind of attack.

One of them raised her eyes, saw the two of them, and murmured something to the others before striding over. "Sentinel Greywind."

"Sentinel Farsong. Hawk Division has returned ahead of time, in good spirits and full numbers. In fact, we bring a little extra."

"Commended, Sentinel Greywind." Farsong turned her attention to Lucy, and in a fraction of a second she already knew everything she needed to know. "Your name, young lady?"

"Lucelia Dawnfeather," she remembered Ma'am. "Ma'am."

Farsong smiled a little. "There is paperwork to be done, as much as it irks me. Sentinel Greywind, you wouldn't mind, would you?"

"Not at all," said Tanalia, through gritted teeth. "I wanted your consultation on training."

Farsong raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips, looking from Lucy's accidentally-dyed hair to her baby fat to her exhausted face. "We have an introductory training group going out in three days. She should go with them." An evil smile graced her perfect lips. "Put her in… Albatross Squad."

Tanalia raised a questioning eyebrow. "We have an Albatross Squad?"

"We do now. Take the four girls in tent X-8, four from Y-3 and Shandris's daughter- she's in G-1."

Lucy's heart sank. She wasn't well-read enough to know what an Albatross was, but it didn't seem even half as cool-sounding as Hawk Squad. The Sentinels, she guessed, named their squads after birds… each squad of ten people. She had no idea about the tents, though. X and Y sounded far away. Tanalia saluted Sentinel Farsong and bid her farewell, striding out into the gloom. Again, Lucy was struck with how _busy_ this place was, people running around and shouting and talking- she could even hear singing and a guitar-like instrument behind her.

Tanalia led her away from the hubbub of the main tent, which she would later come to know as the tactical planning room, and into a maze of smaller, mismatched ones. There was a central sort of corridor that sliced the long lines in half. The general rule was seven tents on the left and eight on the right, but sometimes this differed. Each row was a different colour, even if it was by just a shade, and there were twenty-six rows, for each letter of the alphabet. Lucy noticed with trepidation that the tents became smaller and less colourful the further back they walked, but the decoration got stranger. _These people must be lunatics_, she thought privately. Her youngest prankster, an eleven-year-old boy called Harrin, could have drawn some of the banners better.

They reached row Y and Tanalia led her left, to the third tent along. It was a murky blue with grayish decoration, and over the entrance hung a triptych of what looked, on first inspection, to be a demon punishing someone, but Lucy deeply suspected that the giant, red-eyed figure was Tanalia.

"Attention!" The aforementioned demon barked, and the four girls inside scrambled from whatever they had been doing to stand at attention, looking as though someone had just given them electric shocks. "Tent Y-3, this is Lucelia Dawnfeather. Treat her however you please, but she needs at least three limbs to qualify for introductory training."

Lucy gulped and decided not to give a meek wave. One girl put her moved to shake Lucy's hand. She was short and spritely, with messy shoulder-length white hair and amber eyes. She looked like one of those annoyingly perky people. "Right, you, annoyingly perky one, can show her the ropes… I'll see you, Ileryi, tomorrow, so we can discuss that arm of yours. Your sister gave me some salves to bring back."

A taller girl with her arm in a sling nodded and Tanalia left with a sweeping movement. The occupants of tent Y-3 breathed a collective sigh of relief. Lucy, alone and unfamiliar, stared meekly around the room, looking for a bed. There were six mattresses in here, and four were personalized. Of the other two, one had creeping green mould on it, so Lucy decided not to take that one, which put her conveniently next to the short girl who had shaken her hand. She hesitantly crossed the tent and looked at the sparse bed, wondering if she got given covers. Tanalia had thrown all her belongings overboard.

"Hello," the short girl said at last. "Milo Embershine."

Milo was a rather strange name, so Lucy decided it must be a shortening of something longer. She took the hand cautiously and shook it. "Lucy Dawnfeather."

"What did you do to end up in Y-3 without a record?" The girl with the bad arm, Ileryi, asked, collapsing back onto her bed.

"I set up a tripwire over the main entrance to Darnassus," Lucy boasted, smirking. There were titters, but not the ululation and amazed gasps she was used to. She reminded herself that these people were not children and not easily amused. A little dejected, she looked at the other two girls, who were already disinterested, sitting on one of their beds and flipping through this month's _Ashenvale Post_, which Lucy remembered was supposed to be a notoriously sleazy tabloid, since it had been bought out.

"Did it work?" Milo asked, rummaging through a bag for something while holding the conversation.

"It would have, if it weren't for the Torturer." She glared at the door. "She'd been following me two weeks to catch me. Anyways, my guild did it for me when I got caught, so I saw it anyway."

"That's cool." Said the shorter girl, finally finding what she'd been looking for, a small iron key. "Let's go and get you some supplies, then."

She silently followed Milo out of the tent, feeling rather awkward. Lucy wasn't used to making friends the old-fashioned way; she'd had a tight guild of friends and admirers most of her life. Luckily, Milo seemed to enjoy talking, and explaining how everything worked.

"The further along in the alphabet you are, the less important." She explained as they wove through the maze of tents. "Y-3 is the second-last occupied tent. I'm there because I failed introductory training the first time… Ileryi has a funny arm and the other two, Kenasra and Derida… Ken and Deri… they fail at pretty much everything."

"The Torturer put me there because she hates me."

"She hates everyone, don't worry." Milo offered her a consoling smile. "Introductory training was the worst four months of my life, and now I have to do it all over again."

"Thanks for making me feel better." Lucy grumbled, her eyes flitting from tent to tent. They seemed to go on forever. As they walked, Milo told her a little about the training, explaining that it was as rigorous and exhausting as anything she had ever experienced. They moved from Silverwing Grove to a smaller camp in Ashenvale, where they trained from dawn to dusk and slept on the floors. They hunted for their own meals, to a certain degree, and were expected to help with the upkeep of everything. They studied with a number of weapons and attack techniques, and then there was a final test that involved a mock siege of a town.

Milo's key turned out to open a mildew-stricken storage room built into the hills surrounding the camp in order to fortify it better. Lucy was given bedcovers, a spare set of clothes, basic toiletries and after some tailoring on Milo's part, a set of damp leather armour with a chainlink vest. Once satisfied, she led Lucy out of the storeroom and locked it again. Halfway back to the tent, she suddenly stopped and looked back at Lucy, who was puffing and moaning, despite only carrying half of the stuff.

"Are you okay?" She asked, concerned. "Why are you panting? Did you get injured on the way here?"

Lucy bit her lip and blushed with embarrassment. Perhaps bridge-cleaning had not made her so tough. "Um… just a little out of breath."

Milo looked at her as though she'd just grown an extra head. "You're serious, yes?"

"Yes."

"You can't walk across here carrying armour without getting tired?"

"Yes…"

"How did you get here, then? It's at least four days from Auberdine, where I live…" She cocked an eyebrow and took the rest of Lucy's new belongings as easily as if she were lifting up feathers.

"I have no idea." She admitted. "I'm so tired, I could fall asleep right here, to be honest."

"I see now why you were put with us." She shook her head and smiled again. "Well, at least I can help you in introductory training."

"I don't need your help," said Lucy, offended, upset that she seemed inadequate at everything.

Milo gestured to the pile of belongings she was holding and then looked at Lucy, who was regaining her breath. "Methinks you do."

"No." She didn't like being told what she could and couldn't do. Milo simply dropped her belongings on the grassy, slightly muddy ground and turned around, disappearing alarmingly quickly into the scenery. "Oh, come on!" she shouted at nothing. "Fine, then, I'll _show_ you I can do it myself!"

Lucy got, as is expected, utterly lost, thinking she was in Y when she was actually in C, where she was found by some higher-ranking sentinels and swiftly escorted to the main path, being told off for being around their tents. She walked along the track, keeping her eyes out for a Y. When she did eventually see it, she turned right instead of left, then had to backtrack and ended up in X, actually walking into someone else's tent to much protest. Tired and cold and aching, she eventually just sat down on the main path and waited for someone to find her, refusing to let herself cry, because she wasn't a child any more.

Milo came back for her well into the night, dressed in her pyjamas but with leather boots on, looking as though she had just woken up. She stared at Lucy's shivering form and the muddy clothes strewn around her with sadness. "You couldn't even find the tent."

"Go on, rub it in."

"You just gave up."

"So?"

Milo sighed and sat herself down opposite Lucy. "You can't just give up. Things don't go your way all the time."

"I know that."

"Then why still do it? Make a mistake once, it's learning material, make it twice and you're a bad student."

"Your mother tell you that?" Lucy said angrily, in a very sulky mood. She regretted it as Milo's face softened and she slumped, eyes faraway.

"My mother passed away two years ago."

"Then that was not the most appropriate thing to say?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"I'm sorry." Lucy felt bad.

"No, you're not." Milo gave her a sad smile. "You didn't know her, I don't expect you to have. But it doesn't matter, because I don't expect people like you to feel sorry."

"People like me?"

"Children." Lucy fisted her hands. "No offence meant, but you're a kid."

"You're shorter than me!"

"Which automatically makes me younger? I think not." She smiled again, as she seemed to enjoy doing, and looked around at Lucy's things. "Not a subject for tonight, I think. Let's gather these things and I'll show you back to the tent."

"Why? I thought you were mad at me?" Her kindness puzzled Lucy. Adults usually got angry with her when she was rude to them, and tried to patronize her, or didn't talk to her. Children pulled silly faces or tried to do tricks on her. She didn't understand why someone wouldn't act on their base instincts and emotions, or how Milo was overlooking her sadness and ire and helping Lucy, who was frankly being extremely brattish.

"It's an early start, for everyone… and you'll get cold. Or wet, if it rains." She stood up and picked up all of Lucy's things, heading in the opposite direction that she'd thought the tent might be in. Lucy scrambled after her, confused but glad that she was getting her way, and slightly uncomfortable with it. Conscience, she decided, didn't like how she was treating Milo, who was a nice person. In her basic emotional pallet, she felt sorry for what she'd done. It was… quite a new feeling.

The tent was dimly-lit and oddly warmer than outside. Ileryi was asleep already, and the other two were brushing each other's hair. She was greeted by two looks of animosity that she realized she deserved, because she had made Milo get out of bed and come and look for her.

"Do you know how to make a bed?"

"No." she said quietly, not wanting to wake the sleeper. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. You take this corner of the sheet and tuck it under this corner of the mattress, see? They match up."

"Okay."

"Now, it's not that cold at night, yet, so a single blanket is fine. Put your pyjamas on, unless you want to sleep in that dirty travel wear." Lucy quietly complied with the suggestions, swallowing her pride and the distaste she had for being told to do anything. The issued pyjamas were nowhere near as smooth as those she had worn back in Darnassus, and they were designed so that armour could be fitted over them in the event of a night raid. _If there is one_, she thought glumly, _I'll be about as useful as a chocolate teapot._

As she slipped under the bedcovers in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar tent in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people, Lucy suddenly felt very, very small. The world in Darnassus had largely revolved around her, what trick she would do, who she was squabbling with, what was for her dinner… and now she had to think about this new person whose feelings she had hurt, and she felt responsible for this. It was not a nice feeling, guilt, and she didn't like how Milo had just brushed her apologies off earlier, so she turned over to face the slightly older girl.

"Um, psst." She whispered, and the girl turned over, looking quizzically at her. Even though she had introduced herself as Milo… that was a nickname, one Lucy felt strangely unable to call her. "Hello."

"Goodbye." She rolled back over. Lucy, persevering, poked her back lightly, and now she looked annoyed. "What?"

"Listen, please. I'm sorrythatIspokebadlytoyouandhurtyourfeelings." She said it very quickly with a burning blush on her face. She was reconciled when a sleepy smile graced Milo's purple lips.

"S'okay." She yawned. "Honestly. Steep learning curve n'all."

"And, um… thank you for helping me even though I was beastly to you. Not that I am beastly… or anything."

She propped herself up on an elbow and stared hard at Lucy who felt as though she was being thoroughly judged. "You don't do a great deal of apologizing, do you?"

"Not if I can help it." She admitted. "I don't like it here. It's strange and I don't have a feather bed and silk clothes and any friends. I'm being nasty."

"You're being honest, too." Milo said. "Which is more important. As for not having friends, I didn't when I first came here… maybe five months ago? It sorts itself out, but you have to try. You can't, for instance, taunt someone and expect them to like you."

"I did that to you."

"Yes, but I'm omni-benevolent, so it's all fine."

"Omni-what?"

"Omni-benevolent. All-good."

"Oh." Lucy processed that into her word bank. "Er… thanks for accepting my apology."

"Any time." Milo yawned, and as if it were contagious, Lucy did too, realizing that she was utterly spent. A last thought occurred to her.

"Wait… what is your name?"

"Milo."

"Your real name… like, I'm Lucy, but Lucelia."

"It's Amelia… but that's my mother's name. It reminds me of her, so just call me Milo."

"Okay."

"Goodnight, then, Lucy. Can I call you Lucy?"

"I've been called worse."

Milo chuckled and fell asleep pretty much instantly, leaving Lucy to stare at the dark roof of the tent. She realized, with a sort of dizzy pride, that she'd just had a very grown-up deep meaningful conversation. And she had a friend, which was even better. Even so, she felt as though she'd been canoeing on a little stream all her life, and now suddenly she had come into the open ocean, stretching as far as the eyes could see. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time, the freedom and the vastness of it all.

As she tried to sleep, Lucy noticed that her mattress was odd, bumpy. She tried to ignore it, but once she focused on the unevenness, it plagued her and would not allow her tired bones to rest. Sighing, she rolled off the mattress and looked underneath it, finding, to her surprise, a small stash of magazines. She pulled one out and blew a little dust off the cover. Almost yelping, she dropped the thing as though it were white hot, staring at the picture. It was a human-published magazine, marketed to men-_ Funtime _– particularly notorious for printing pictures of scantily clad girls. Why it was under her mattress, she had no idea. Were there male sentinels? She hadn't seen a single one all day, though Ken and Deri had been mumbling about a man adoringly, called Annriden, whom they said was the record-keeper here.

Perhaps he had slept here, once? Or, there were lots of male sentinels, she just hadn't seen them. Placated by these rationalizations, Lucy moved the collection to under the mouldy mattress quietly and finally found some sleep, though Milo, much to her chagrin, snored.

-

A/N: I do realize how silly this is compared to The Brotherhood, but I need a breather. Next chapter… look forward to a little action, a little friendship and some very silly metaphors. Furbolg is such a good swearword.


	3. Chapter 3

The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co

Chapter 3

Lucy had laughed. Not just giggled or tittered quietly, but downright snorted in disbelief as she was showed the nice, comfy and frankly quite luxurious patch of ground that was to be her bed for the next four months.

That was until Milo had stamped rather hardly on her foot.

There were ten girls lined up by the training ground, and just by a sight inspection you could see why they quite definitely required training. There was Lucy and her horrendous state of fitness (which could, conceivably, be described as just a total lack of fitness altogether), Milo, who Lucy had found out seemed to be on the ground more than on her own feet, and another girl who seemed to be afraid of everything around her. Next to them, the rest of Albatross Squad was relatively normal.

_Relatively _being the operative word in that sentence.

Lucy had considered shooting herself in the foot with one of the rusty muskets that hung on the armoury wall when she'd heard that Tanalia was foregoing her two weeks of post-duty holiday in order to come out and teach them, but decided it would be a bit too painful. She'd asked Milo if she'd break her wrist, but the shorter girl had told her that Tanalia would notice.

Their friendship was based on the principle that Milo was a sort of sponge, soaking up bad energy and occasionally letting it all go. It proved mostly successful and largely more beneficial to Lucy than Milo, who put up on a daily basis with such requests as breaking a wrist, but imparted precious wisdom that gave Lucy a slight head start over the other sentinels there, however minimal it was. But when Milo had shown her where the softest patch of earth to sleep on was, she'd lost it.

"You can't honestly expect me to sleep there for four months."

"No. Just until we have enough free time to fashion a hut."

"A hut? From what?"

"Whatever we can find. We'll have to be quick, because the weather is unpredictable and our packs aren't waterproof. Plus, then we get to be smug while everyone else gets wet." Lucy perked up at that. Avarice, smugness and pride were all areas she excelled in. She agreed to pitch in to building a hut when they got the chance.

"Right. Albatross Squad, your timetable is as follows." Tanalia paced up and down the mostly-empty clearing sinisterly. "Oh-five-hundred, wake-up. Oh-five-fifteen, breakfast. Oh-five-forty-five assemble in rank as you are now. Oh-five-five-fifty…"

The day seemed to consist of nothing but physical activity. Swords, followed by polearms, then maces (one handed and two handed on a rotation), bows, guns… every weapon Lucy could think of, they trained in. Survival, ambush, group tactics… there also seemed to be no lunch, which was Lucy's deepest disappointment. The sentinels also had to do on hour a day on languages, which really irked Lucy… because even her Darnassian was heavily colloquial. At school she had been forced to learn Common, the horrible guttural language it was, but she'd generally slept or skipped classes, meaning that she couldn't speak it fluently. They were also supposed to learn Orcish, the main language of the horde, so that they could overhear conversations. To Lucy, it sounded like a string of differently-pitched grunts.

They were placed in twos, and thankfully Milo and Lucy were together, probably because Tanalia remembered first introducing them. They had their shelter done in a week, impressive when the only free time available was twenty minutes before bed and five minutes before supper.

Food became, after utter exhaustion, one of Lucy's greatest problems. She was used to having whatever meals she wanted whenever, which was not the case here. They broke their fasts each morning with porridge, and on the first day Lucy had rushed to put as much sugar in hers as possible, against Milo's cautions. She had spent the morning zipping around, but by about midday she was exhausted. From then on she went for more long-term energy.

In polearms, she wasn't paired with Milo, but a weedy and lanky girl called Cerianne. Later, she'd found out that she was none other than the daughter of Shandris Feathermoon, commander of all the sentinels.

She was also a total wuss.

Cerianne hated polearms, and swords and ambushes and anything violent. She enjoyed singing and painting and playing a little reed flute she owned. The fact that Lucy knew this within a week and a half of knowing her was indicative of the amount of actual fighting they managed to do. One day, she asked the stupid question.

"But, if your mum is a sentinel, like… the head sentinel, why aren't you a good sentinel?"

Cerianne started crying and refused to speak to her. Lucy, perplexed, asked Milo.

"She's sensitive about it… people expect her to be amazing because her mother is, but she's not."

"Then I offended her?"

"Yes."

"So I should say sorry?"

Milo would have patted her on the head, but she was shorter than Lucy, so it would have been awkward at best. "Good girl. Have a nightsaber nibble."

"Don't patronize me, I know that they're pet food."

"They still taste nice."

"You're weird." Lucy laughed a bit and decided that she should say sorry to Cerianne. This proved harder than she'd thought, considering the girl would no longer go within ten metres of her if it could be helped. This was remedied by the fact that Tanalia oversaw their weapons sessions and Cerianne actually had to appear as though she was practicing two-handed twirl-thrusts.

"Please, I'm sorry." She pleaded whilst ducking a badly aimed knee-jab. "I didn't mean to upset you. I didn't know that you were sensitive about your mum."

Now Lucy thought about it, people's mothers seemed to be the cause of a great deal of problems. Hers was a mid-ranked priestess and incredibly boring. Well, maybe not so boring, she thought with some guilt at the treatment she had given her parents, but compared to everyone else's, rather dull. Cerianne stopped momentarily and looked as though she would burst into tears again.

"No, no… please, don't cry. I'm not good with apologies. I'm sorry." Lucy was becoming sick of apologizing and she'd only done it twice. To her surprise, Cerianne calmed down and took a deep breath in.

"I forgive you." She said mildly. "You had no way of knowing. I propose a truce, blossoming into a mutually beneficial acquaintanceship."

Lucy did not understand most of those words. Cerianne spoke in an accented Darnassian that she guessed came from Feralas. Blankly, she nodded. "Yes. I agree."

"Marvelous." Cerianne smiled and seemed to have forgotten her animosity towards Lucy altogether, though possibly it had not been so much animosity as a deep aversion, because she didn't really think that Cerianne was capable of such a dark emotion as hate. Everything about the girl screamed pacifist, which gave rise to the question of why she was here in the first place, training to fight and kill people.

From then on, Lucy found the going a bit easier. She had a friend and an acquaintance, and no more was she deluded into thinking that anything she'd ever have to do again was going to be remotely easy. She had a waterproof hut and someone who knew everything like the back of her hand. She was gold.

Until, that is, she met Micale Everglow.

She reminded Lucy of herself, just snottier and much taller and with an incredibly posh accent that was unmistakably Astranaarian. And with less cleverness. One month into her internment, they rotated sparring partners, and Lucy was placed with someone she hadn't thought existed: a girl with a larger sense of self-importance than she herself possessed.

"You speak like a ten-year old." Was the first thing that Micale had told her, when she'd introduced herself. "And you're fat."

"Thanks," she'd replied, desperately wanting to slap her but refraining because last time she'd hit someone while not in combat training, Tanalia had made her clean out the latrines. Milo had voluntarily slept outside that night, she'd smelled so bad. Night elves generally considered personal cleanliness important, but Tanalia did not. If they wanted a shower, she informed them that there was a freezing stream about three miles to the west that they were welcome to visit in their free time. Needless to say, nobody had the time or the bravery to wend their way through the thick and sinister forest, so they had to forego full showers in favour of short washes of their arms, neck and faces.

Lucy had stopped thinking of introductory training as her own personal hell and broadened it out to just hell in general, for the whole Albatross Squad. Two girls dropped out after a month and a half, and to Lucy's annoyance, Micale was not one of them. She was the most stuck-up and easily aggravated person she had ever known, who constantly flaunted her pure ancestry as the reason she always won bouts of sparring. Lucy learnt that not only had her mother been a high-ranking sentinel, but her grandmother and her great-grandmother and all the women in her long and unbroken line had been too.

"Why does that make you a good sentinel?" She asked mid-spar, receiving a nasty rap on the shoulder for it. "Look at Cerianne."

"She failed her bloodline." Micale sniffed, standing back and waiting for Lucy to wearily haul herself off the floor and begin another bout. They were using wooden weapons and she still felt as though she'd been killed every time Micale's sword/stave/two-handed mace poked into her or whacked her. It was embarrassing and degrading and Lucy was anything but a good sport. What most irked her was Micale's attitude of complacency and her refusal to believe that she was wrong. Upon refection, Lucy squirmed a little when she realized that she and the snobbish excuse for a girl were startlingly similar.

"She's just a girl."

"She's a sentinel. She can't afford to fail. Failure is death, and death is the end."

"You're an atheist?"

"No, I'm a pessimist." Micale said shortly, flipping her long, black hair out of her face. "Gods or no gods, none of us are going to live forever. And after death, none of us will become eternal."

Lucy couldn't reason with her logic, so instead she ducked under a lazy waist-height blow and drove up into Micale's stomach, who swiftly sidestepped and clouted her on the back of the head. Dazed and face-down in the mud, Lucy groaned as Micale put her foot onto her back and pushed down. "You're pathetic."

"Motherfurbolg," she swore, earning an increase in the weight on her back.

"Mic, get off her." She heard a small voice say from next to her.

"Don't call me that." Micale growled. "She deserves it."

"I'm sure she does." She could hear the eyeroll in that sentence, and with a jolt, recognized the voice as Milo's. Was she on a nickname basis with this snob? "But she's had enough crap already."

"Not enough."

"Be reasonable."

"I am."

"No, you're not." A sigh. "You don't know what its like, doing this from scratch. You spent twenty-seven years being tailored to this."

Reluctantly, the weight lifted from her back and Lucy hauled herself up, wiping mud from her eyes. The sight she saw was quite entertaining- Milo telling a girl at least a head taller than her off. For someone so short and slight, she held a great deal of sway and seemed to have a great number of friends and acquaintances. Lucy guessed it had something to do with being omni-benevolent. "Thanks." She said, looking at Micale, but meaning it to Milo. "You two know each other?"

"I was in Mic's tent before I failed introductory training the first time. She caught forest fever and didn't get to go, whereas I did. So now she's back here, and feverless."

Mic crossed her arms and looked embarrassed, like catching a disease was somehow her fault. Her golden eyes looked down at the floor, and then at Tanalia, who was busy berating Cerianne. "And you still failed."

"I won't this time." Milo said, with more resolve than Lucy had noticed in her. Usually, Milo could be relied upon to be laid back, generous and friendly, but there was a little flicker in her eyes now that said that she was ashamed with herself for failing. "And Mic?"

"Don't call me that. What?"

"I call you Mic because it rhymes with prick. I shan't call you anything else until you stop being one."

"How dare you-"

"Is there a problem, ladies?" Tanalia's monotone cut the conversation off before Mic the prick could say anything else.

"No."

"Then why am I not seeing perfectly executed triple-thrust jump-kicks?"

"Because Lucy can't jump, let alone thrust and kick at the same time." Mic said spitefully as Milo melted back to her partner with a wink.

"As is expected, I guess." Tanalia gave a dramatic sigh of agreement. "I suspect that Lucy needs a little less weight pulling her down. In fact, I think all of you could do with the same. Thank you for the idea, Miss Everglow."

Lucy felt a little love for Tanalia's ability to make everyone miserable then, but it was quickly swallowed in the sea of hatred and the grating realization that she had not only been made fun of, but that the Torturer was also planning something and _she_ would take the blame. Tanalia smiled and walked over to the next pair, who hastily started practicing again.

"Thanks a load." She hissed at Mic the prick, who merely shrugged it off and jumped on top of her brandishing a wooden pole in a move that definitely wasn't a triple-thrust jump-kick. Maybe a triple-thrust hump-kick. She was given a bruise on her temple to add to her immensely large collection and a little bit of pride chipped off, also. Milo was busy being told of by Tanalia to come and help her. She tiredly rolled out from underneath Mic and tried a triple-thrust jump-kick, which was about as useful as life insurance to a forsaken.

She was teamed with Cerianne for ambush that afternoon, which was a huge burden, considering that she was freaked out by anything that rustled. It became so annoying that Lucy climbed a tree with some difficulty, then pulled a length of rope from her pack and tied Cerianne to it, telling her to be quiet and that she'd do it herself. In retrospect, it had probably not benefited Cerianne's training, but ambushing solo was a great deal easier. By the end, Lucy had taken down the green and purple teams before being caught by Milo and dragged back to camp with a mild concussion. It was, she thought, like a giant game of hide and seek, except that they had wooden swords and bows, though the arrows were covered completely in foam to avoid impalement.

Most people in Albatross Squad didn't like Lucy. She was loud and boastful without actually being any good at anything and she argued a lot. Cerianne seemed to be at once friendly and terrified of her, Mic the prick detested the very air she breathed and Milo put up with her. She wasn't doing very well on the making friends front. What didn't help this was when they assembled in rank for the night.

"You'll be foregoing meals for the next three days." Tanalia informed them. "Unless, of course, you can catch anything in your free time and have the facilities to cook it. Water is at the river, you know where."

It spread very quickly that Lucy had been the cause of this. That night, in the time that would have been dinner, they assembled outside Milo and Lucy's tent, seeking council as to what to do, because Milo had done this before.

"Well, we now have an hour free at night and thirty minutes in the morning." She said. "We need meat, so we could send out a hunting team. And as for breakfast, there is fruit and nuts to be found easily in the forest."

"What about water? The stream is miles away, and the barrels are nearly empty." Mic the prick asked, arms crossed and brow furrowed.

"I think Lucy should go get it." Said none other than Cerianne, who looked in deep concentration. "As contrition for her causing this is the first place."

"By myself?" Lucy asked, appalled. The water barrels were huge and would be even heavier when filled. Plus, the river was at least and hour's walk away.

"Yes."

"No. Mic should go with her, seeing as she ratted Lucy out in the first place." Milo said, pointing an accusatory finger.

"You're biased." One of the others grumbled, but mostly everyone agreed- after Lucy, Micale was the next least-liked member of Albatross Squad. So, Lucy ended up spending an exhausting hour at dawn and dusk with a girl she despised jogging through thick forest, rolling a giant barrel in front of them. Due to the shortage of water, nobody could wash any more, and drinks had to be shared out. Breakfast changed from boring but healthy and hot porridge to meager nuts and chopped fruits. After three days, Tanalia made the announcement that she wasn't pleased yet and they'd go another three days without their food being provided.

"They did this last time," Milo explained. "Though we didn't have to be _completely_ self-sufficient…"

"Good thing you knew what to do, then." Lucy said tiredly, owing to the fact that she was getting very little sleep and was constantly hungry. The hunting team, led by Milo, only ever caught small deer or rabbits, which didn't have enough meat for all eight of them- and they didn't have the ingredients to spare for a stew, either. Lucy seriously considered dropping out one night, when she was curled up and racked by hunger pangs, shivering from the cold and kept awake by Milo's snoring. She should have taken her six months of bridge-scrubbing, she thought glumly.

The next day seemed not to dawn at all, and Lucy woke up at about four in the morning to the sound of thunder and lightening battering the roof of their hut. She had to make the water-run now, but she didn't want to. She wanted to stay curled up in her blanket and sleep for seven more hours, waking up on a feather bed to the sound laughing children and polite conversation, and the smell of baking wafting into her bedroom for downstairs. She was thoroughly homesick, underfed, constantly exhausted and disliked. She didn't like being a grown-up. She had been the centre of the universe, the queen of the children, and now she was the smallest grain of sand on the Zoram Strand, unknown, unloved and unworthy.

She started crying.

Behind her, Milo woke up and heard Lucy. "Lucy? What's wrong?"

"This sucks." She sniffed, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "It's not fun at all. I don't like it. I want to go home."

"Nobody's stopping you." Milo said simply, rolling over to face her.

"Shouldn't you be telling me to stay? To persevere, and all that?"

"I could, but it would be useless. You either stay or you give up. I thought the same things last time I did training." She sighed and pulled out a bag of nightsaber nibbles from her pack. Lucy knew that she must be serious, because Milo loved nightsaber nibbles and didn't share them lightly. She took one of the snacks and gratefully chewed it, reveling in the taste of meaty biscuit. At the moment, she'd eat anything, pet food or no.

"Why did you decide to stay?"

"My mother." She smiled, tossing a nibble into her mouth and crunching on it. "She always said she wanted to be a sentinel, but her own mother forbade it. She stayed in Auberdine as a tailor, but she was never happy. I decided to achieve her dream for her."

"That's so deep." Lucy sighed. "I was blackmailed here so that Darnassus didn't have to deal with me."

"A reason is a reason." She stretched and started putting her clothes on. "Since I'm up, we many as well do the water run. Two barrels are better than one."

"Elune's nipples, I may even get a wash…" Lucy fantasized about having a hot, steaming bath, filled with the sprigs lavender, with a mellow peacebloom-scented candle… and then stopped as she thought of the freezing cold river water. "You don't have to. It's not your job."

"I like water. And I'm awake anyway." Before Lucy could wrap her mind around that reasoning, Milo had stood up (though in the hut, which was about a metre high, it was more of a crouch) and started buckling her armour on with a speed Lucy envied. The little clasps and clips confused her to no end, at it usually took her a good ten minutes, but if she had help it was much faster. The two of them abandoned the warm and person-smelling sanctuary of their crude wooden hut and walked out into the chilling darkness of pre-dawn. There were no such things as lanterns here, so they had to feel their way through the dark until they came upon the square shape of Mic's hut, which she shared with Cerianne, even though the two despised each other, or as close to hate as the latter could manage. Before they could enter to rouse her, Mic came stumbling out, fastening her cloak with fumbling fingers. She stopped just short of tumbling into the two of them, and with soundless accord, the group treaded carefully to the other end of the camp, where the solid and permanent buildings were: one storage room and the instructor's tent.

The barrels were kept around the back of the storage room. They were about ten kilograms unloaded, but they became heavier than all three of the girls together when full, making the only way of transporting them rolling, which was painfully slow and precarious, because of all the roots and stones that littered the forest.

Lucy was thankful for the morning dullness, as it took the edge of Mic's usual sharpness. She accepted that Milo was coming with them and worked in silence, rolling her barrel as she had done for the past eight days, yawning at intervals. Lucy, though certainly much fitter than when she had left Darnassus, was far from being at all useful, and the problem was that they had to jog there and back in order to keep the water run at an hour. If they weren't back at camp for when Tanalia called roll… Lucy didn't want to think about it.

"I see what you mean about the distance," Milo panted, pushing the barrel along. "But the pace is nothing to moan about."

"Shut… up…" Lucy nursed a stitch as they came out of the forest to the riverside, skidding to a halt. "Fu… furbolgs…"

"Language." Milo warned her before taking the footpump used to fill the barrels from the river out from her pack. "How do we use this?"

"Stick one end in there, one end in the barrel and them stamp the bloody thing like it's Tanalia's smug face."

"Sounds easy enough." She set the little pump up and started stamping, causing the pressure in the hose to alternate, and pushing river water into the barrel. "How long does this take?"

"Twenty minutes tops." Lucy said as Mic got out the other pump and started her own. She was rather enjoying not having to do the pumping- it really tired her. She sat down by a tree and stretched labouriously slowly, reveling in her inactivity. When the sun rose, there would be running and fighting and bruises. Homesickness and hunger, however, caused even this small pleasure to sour, and she was left feeling useless. Restless, she stood up and looked above into the tree, seeing some funny red fruit. Ashenvale was typically seasonless, much like Darnassus, though the chill of nighttime indicated winter. Fruit grew all year round, and Lucy hefted herself up the tree carefully, picking the juicy red fruit off its stalk and then scrambling down.

She wanted to eat it all, but against her base instincts, she divided it up into three, though she set the smaller third away for Mic. Eating her share, she spit out the pips and then washed her hands in the river. She handed Milo and Mic each their thirds, which they devoured immediately; food, whatever it was, didn't get ignored for long.

In the trees, something caught Lucy's eye. Ever the magpie, she snuck away in the direction of a strange twinkling. She came upon a bear, its beady eyes glinting in the fading moonlight. It did not look happy.

It lunged at her, snarling, its great maw open and snapping. Terrified, Lucy flung herself out of the way in abandon, seeing a tree with low branches and shooting up it faster than a gecko on felweed. It was not her fault that she didn't know that bears could climb trees. The massive creature experimentally sunk its claws into the soft wood and began to climb up slowly, prompting Lucy to swing up to even higher branched.

"Furbolg furbolg furbolg furbolg motherfurbolg with all the trimmings," she swore, swearing never, ever to go running after shiny things again. The bear climbed scarily fast, now, having found its feet, and was swiftly encroaching on her comfort zone. It occurred to her than she should probably jump down and roll, like she had been taught, to avoid broken bones, so she launched herself off the tree- unfortunately right at the bear, who opened his jaws in glee to receive his meal. He didn't take into account, however, that firstly, Lucy was heavy, secondly, he was up a tree, and thirdly his claws were not particularly stable. The two of them went flying down to the undergrowth, Lucy bouncing harmlessly on top of the bear, whose neck gave a sickening _crack_ as he met his end.

Not believing she was alive, Lucy extricated herself from the bear's jaws. Despite falling to his doom, the bear had bitten her, leaving deep gouges on the left side of her stomach, which bled even through her thin leather armour. She'd stopped wearing the mail, because it was too heavy, but was now cursing herself. "Ohhh… that hurts." She held her side as she stood up, not wanting to examine the bite marks. Lucy hated the sight of blood.

"Lucy?" Came a shout through the forest. Milo burst through the trees, rolling a barrel in front of her, looking around. "By Elune! What did you…" her eyes traveled from Lucy, to the dead bear, to the blood that was quickly saturating her left side. "Mic! Come here!"

She ran towards Lucy and quickly unbuckled her armour, her fingers trembling. It took Lucy a lag period of about a minute to feel the pain properly, which came in sickening waves, radiating from the epicentre, the blood staining her tunic and her hands and dripping down her side. She nearly lost her balance, but remained standing shakily as pain laced through her.

She felt a little self-conscious about being stripped, but Milo probably knew more about tending to wounds than she did. She groaned as chilly fingers probed the seventeen-odd cuts, not chancing to look down at the damage. She thought that maybe one of the bear's teeth had broken off and remained in her skin, and the thought made her dizzy, sending the world into an odd haze of greens and purples- which it was anyway in Ashenvale, but even more so now- and sending her tumbling towards the floor. Hard arms hooked under her armpits and she was conscious of jabbering voices and the feeling of immense pain. She supposed this was either shock or blood loss, but did not have the knowledge of what either of them felt like.

She rode piggyback on Mic the whole way back because Milo was too short and sprightly to support her. The barrels and the bear were left, but Lucy hoped they'd come back for them, because then they'd have water and meat for ages. A whole bear was a feast.

She did, however, black out when she heard shrieks and shouts, probably from the other members of Albatross Squad.

-

"So, after it swiped at me, I ducked and brought a hand beneath its jaw, trying to break its neck. It worked, but I didn't have the strength to finish it off after it took a chunk out of me… but I was lucky, and it was killed. I walked for hours on end, blood dripping from my side-"

"We found you right next to the bear."

"I walked in a big circle."

"The bear was still breathing when we arrived."

"It took ages to die."

"Do you want the truth or a decent story?" Lucy said, annoyed that she'd been cut off halfway through her monologue. She was lying on a collapsible bed, some kind of gnomish trick, which was blissfully softer than the ground. Her body was clothed in rough linen underclothes, but woolen bandages that smelled strongly of herbs bound her wounds. She'd had a little scare when Tanalia had asked if the bear was rabid and Lucy didn't know how to tell, but after a recovery team had gone out for the barrels and the bear she'd found out that it was free of disease.

She'd been allowed to sleep for a whole ten hours and been fed wonderful hot soup full of more funny herbs. Tanalia had foregone calling a priest out and tended the injury herself, forcing bitter potions down Lucy's throat every four hours that stopped the pain to some degree.

"The truth is probably a good story in itself," Milo said sagely. "Sit up, I'm changing your bandages."

"Again?" Lucy moaned. "It hurt so much."

"It'll hurt more if you get an infection." Sighing, she hauled herself up from the bed with Cerianne's aid, who had just sat by her side, doing anything she was told. She blamed herself for suggesting that Lucy did the water run, even though she'd twice said it wasn't her fault. She was reconciling herself for whatever she thought she'd done. She winced as Milo unfurled the bandages, feeling the forming scabs being prized off. "You're so lucky, you know, Lucy."

"Honestly, it was sheer luck. Very little actual skill invol- fu-furbolg dung! What was that for?" she swore as Milo ripped the last layer off. "I climbed the tree and fell on the bear."

"_That _sounds more like something Lucy would do," Mic said snidely, but with a dampened edge as she entered the nice, heated room that Lucy was in. It seemed that the storeroom had a back room that had a small hearth and several of the gnomish fold-beds, along with a plentiful supply of first aid kit. Their access to it was thanks to Lucy, as was the increased amount of water and the meat, plus the half-day of free time they'd had while Tanalia had tended to her.

"Mic, you screamed like a girl when you saw that bear, and it was dead." Milo teased her while rubbing green herb paste into Lucy's wounds. Unused to being touched, Lucy had at first shied away from the ministrations, but it soon became apparent that she needed to heal herself if she wanted to continue with her training, which she did. People liked her now they had double water and meat and a day off, and they admired her bravery in killing a bear. It was all good.

"I am a girl." She said simply. "I brought tea. Sentinel Greywind says you should drink it."

"She's pumping me full of drugs." Lucy moaned. "I can barely feel my fingers, I'm so dosed up."

"Be thankful you have fingers."

"I am."

"Then don't complain."

"Yes, mother." Lucy rolled her eyes before realizing what she'd said, but Milo seemed not to notice. "I've lost my sense of time- what day is it?"

"Second month, fourth day. We made it halfway." Milo said, and Cerianne whipped out her reed flute and played a little melody.

"_It's the second month, the fourth day. By god's own grace, we made it halfway. Two of us have left, but eight still stay… under the watch of the demon of Grey."_

"I like it," Lucy sniggered. "It's a bit sad that Albatross squad is down to eight, though. I never quite remembered why those two left."

Suddenly everyone seemed to go red. "What? What have I missed?"

"Someone else tell her." Milo mumbled, blushing fiercely as she replaced the bandages.

"Well…" Cerianne recovered first, assuming her detached tone. "They were caught fornicating after lights out."

"Forni… what?"

"Lucy, you backwards child. Fornicating… like, sex. Putting the furbolg in the cave… the horse in the stable. Um, do you need any other metaphors?"

"No." Lucy knew what sex was from school. "But… wait a minute. They're girls."

"So?"

"So… that's like… two caves and no furbolg."

"Well, there's, say… a moonkin to substitute." Cerianne continued with the metaphor.

These allegories were confusing Lucy slightly. "Where did the moonkin come from?"

"Well… the moonkin lived in the cave first, before the furbolgs came along."

"…Perhaps I didn't pay enough attention to the female anatomy… but…"

"The moonkin live _outside_ the cave… gods, do I have to keep explaining this?"

"No." Milo finished with the bandages and sat back. "Just accept that it's possible, Lucy, and we can move on."

"Okay."

There was an awkward silence between the four of them for a while, before Cerianne decided to break the silence. "So, you didn't fail."

"Tanalia said as long as I'm good to do 'light exercise' in three days, it's okay."

"'Light exercise?'"

"I didn't ask her. It was understood that she meant what I thought was… what was that word? Ardulus?"

"Arduous."

"Yes. Tanalia's 'light exercise' is my 'arduous training'."

"At least you didn't fail." Milo said, being bright and cheery as always. "Failing isn't fun."

"But if you hadn't of failed, you'd've never met _me_!" Lucy joked, stressing the 'me'. "And what a loss that would have been."

"Indeed. I take back everything I've said about maturity, Lucy. Stay as a child… I can tale silly jokes, but sarcasm is too much." Mic was sneaking out of the room, the atmosphere far too merry for her. "No, come back, you!" Milo told her off. "Aloof fails when we know that you scream like a girl."

Mic left anyway. "Her loss." Said Cerianne, who took the cup of drugged tea and forced it upon Lucy, who grudgingly drunk it, feeling as though she hadn't slept in years. "I can play a lullaby, if that would make you sleep quicker."

"I'm tired of sleep," she muttered, putting the cup down and slumping back onto the nice, feather pillow. "But then again…"

-

A/N: that sex metaphor confused me, too. I hope you giggled a bit.


	4. Chapter 4

The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co

Chapter Four

"I told you just to blow the bloody doors off!" Milo shouted over the din, leaping down from the tree she was sitting in and surveying the damage. "We were going to be small-scale, but no, you had to double the dynamite."

Albatross squad collectively blushed and muttered amongst themselves. "Shouldn't we be attacking the town?"

"The town will be attacking us, now." She shouldered her bow and withdrew her glaive, the metal shining in the evening light. The wicked edge reminded the whole group that this was real combat (well, mock real combat… which makes very little sense), not sparring or drills. This was their final exam, and Milo was _not _failing it a second time. She wasn't going to watch her old friends proudly receive their GCSE in Siege Skills & Combat while she had to retake it and start afresh.

Mic took over while she was thinking wicked things, pulling out her bow. "We'll not have much advantage on low ground, so four of you… the ones with the best aim, so that discounts Lucy… will come with me and stealthily come in while the loud and colourful group run inside bearing sharp metal prongs."

"Sounds good to me."

"Hey! My aim is… okay!" Lucy huffed indignantly.

"Lucy, you're much better at making a lot of noise and scaring people, thus, that is your job." Was all she got in return.

They formed into their two groups and readied their weapons, looking dubiously at the high, wooden walls of the 'enemy encampment'. They didn't know what it was filled with, but from the sounds coming from behind the barricades, they weren't human, or elves, or anything Lucy had seen before. She gulped and her hand tightened on her glaive, which was substantially shorter that Milo's (because she didn't have the balance to fight with long weapons) but equally as sharp. On a hand signal, they began their wild entrance, hopping and jumping over the rubble and charred ground that had once been the main gate, startling the occupants.

Lucy found out that they were orcs. Not brave, brawny, wide-chested horde orcs, but orcs that had been in captivity for a great deal of time. She guessed that this was their prison, and it was refreshed each time introductory training was done with new fodder for the slaughter. She hesitated, looking at the nearest one, whose eyes were tired and frightened, not bloodthirsty, but no sooner had she thought this than he'd sprung at her, meaty hands open and searching for her neck. It was easier to justify killing as self-defense, so she ducked underneath his clumsy attempt to grasp her and unceremoniously stuck her glaive through his back. There was a horrible moment when Lucy realized that she'd killed someone, a sentient being, with parents and friends, but her moral confusion was swallowed in the erupting battle.

The four glaive-wielders would surge forward, picking off several assembled orcs, then withdraw, like waves on a beach, swelling and abating. It was a graceful way to kill. Soon, the archers has shadowmelded their way around and grappled onto the low roofs, bowstrings twanging as they let off arrow after arrow, into the throng of perplexed orcs, who wondered wildly where the extra attack was coming from.

Lucy, for all her complaining and slacking, could fight. Not as well as any of the other glaive-wielders, but well enough to hold her own against the weakened and weaponless orcs. She was not particularly agile, nor could she do funny twisty things with her pointy piece of metal, but why would she want to? A normal stab is as deadly as a stab with the preamble of a twirl and a jump and a little spinny thing, in her book. Blood began to drench her armour and she fought back overwhelming nausea at the sight of it, quelling her fear and phobia with total immersion in the roar of battle.

It became less of a slaughter when the orcs got their wits about them and ran back to the biggest hut, finding weapons along the way. Barrels, crates, chairs, anything that was available. From amongst them came a tall orc, a proud orc- a horde orc. He held the only proper weapon, a spiked club, and absolutely terrified Lucy. He was a creature to be feared and exalted, not cut down by little girls in their training.

And, Lucy found, he was hell-bent on killing Cerianne, which was another indication of his intelligence. She was quick and had excellent aim, but she was also shaking with fright and would be hard-pressed to do anything but stare and mumble if the boss orc came anywhere near her. Because she was considering this, Lucy suffered a fierce punch to the head, which caused her to topple over and hit the hard, sandy ground hard. Scrambling up, she severed the orc's head and groaned, feeling as though her brain had been smashed to one side. This was surely too dangerous for mere girls?

"Ghak'ran tar! Hag noz reg gata'gat rom sken!" the Boss Orc shouted, and Lucy's Orcish for beginners picked up most of the sentence, though not the grammar. He'd said something along the lines of a plan, telling the orcs to: 'get lots big on top of house and kill', which Lucy supposed was as articulate as Orcish got. They were swarming on Cerianne, Mic and the archers.

"Milo! They're headed for the roofs!" she shouted as another orc met his (or her, Lucy could hardly tell) end on the apex of her blade.

"Archers, jump down!"

"No! They're going to gang up on Cerianne!"

But the archers had already followed her orders, a timid Cerianne being immediately swallowed by the main part of the orc forces. Bile rose in Lucy's throat and she thought she might cry, knowing that she was nowhere near good enough to fight all of them herself. They abandoned their tidal formation and all eight of the sentinels rushed the orcs, enraged at the dirty tactics. Lucy, being quite short, ducked and searched for Cerianne's body, thinking to pull it out of the battle in case she got stepped on. It was harder than she thought, but as she grasped the girl's ankles and tugged, she slowly slid through the dirt. Lucy's heart leapt when she saw the rising and falling of Cerianne's chest- she was breathing. One side of her armour was roughly torn and bleeding, revealing deep puncture marks that reminded Lucy of her own, from the bear. Only one weapon here could have done that- the Boss Orc's mace.

She hid Cerianne in a house and rushed back out, seeking vengeance. She'd come to know the girl well over the last three months, and she didn't deserve to be taken by a cheap shot, training to be something she didn't agree with, just because of her family expectations. Lucy knew that well, how her mother had told her that she'd grow up to be a priest, just like her, which she abhorred.

Retaliation coursing through her, Lucy gave a mad shout and launched herself into the disorganized rabble of fighting, slashing the back of an orc clean open, swallowing vomit as she watched him fall to the ground, red as the domes of Silvermoon City. It was in those moments that Lucy understood why this was the final test- it was not only about the fighting, the killing, but also the mentality that came with it. The stern sense of duty that Lucy felt pounding within her chest, the yearning to protect and avenge a friend. In that battle, she felt more motivated than she ever had in her entire life, even when she was tricking. It was an alien feeling, and she felt as though something inside her changed, like a door had been closed and had now creaked open a little, letting a refreshing gust into a stuffy room.

She focused on the Boss Orc as though she were a blinkered horse, moving purposefully towards where he was busy grinning and commanding the others. With a great swing of her glaive, Lucy attacked him; though he brought his giant club up to parry her. He was not so gleeful any more, looking at her with narrow eyes. Lucy wasn't an excellent fighter; she was mediocre at best, in honesty, but even the tallest and brawniest of orcs would have had trouble with her, as enraged as she was. A little whirlwind of sharp metal, destroying anything in her path. This was how, with wide and frightened eyes, the Boss Orc met his match, his large and heavy club nowhere near fast enough to counter her darting blows. After a few dozen puncture wounds, he fell, dead.

The fighting was fast abating as the sentinels started running after fleeing orcs, pumped with adrenaline from their victory. Lucy, however, was not ecstatic. Fr from it, she was worried about Cerianne. Entering the house where she had put her, Lucy found that she was gone. Disappeared. Nowhere to be seen. It didn't make sense- she was in no shape to get up and walk, and no orcs had been in here…

She ran out of the house and was greeted by Milo, launching herself upon Lucy in a triumphant hug. Lucy didn't like hugs much, but she hugged back, knowing that this was far more important to Milo than she could fathom.

"We did it!" The shorter girl breathed, the smell of blood saturating the air. "We won! I passed!"

"How do you fail?"

"You die or you get so injured that you can't fight."

"…" A look passed between them. "Cerianne."

"What're you two doing, dawdling there?" Mic shouted from across the internment camp. "We're assembling at the main hut and preparing for the hike back to camp."

"But Cerianne is missing!" Lucy said urgently. "After she went down I put her in this hut, and she just disappeared!"

"She failed, then."

"What?"

"Lucy, you do know that apart from us there are a team of trained sentinels here to remove anyone who fails. They'll have taken her to tend her wounds quicker than we could have."

"But-"

"Leave it," Said Milo sadly. "I remember being hauled off. It's the worst feeling in the world. Let's just go to the hut."

Lucy sullenly looked back at the lack of Cerianne and followed Milo, who was practically glowing at having finally passed her introductory training, and that would not be extinguished by the lack of Cerianne. She made a mental note to ask her how she failed the first time. The reached the hut where seven tired sentinels sat or stood, breathing or nursing small wounds, or in one case, a big wound. Ilyeri, who Lucy hadn't really talked to a great deal, had re-broken her wrist or arm, whichever it was, and was sitting on a table looking as though she'd rather have sex with a furbolg than have to go through only being able to use one arm again.

Shuddering at that thought, combined with all the mixed metaphors about furbolgs and caves that had not abated from her dreams or thought processes for nigh on two months, Lucy tuned herself back in to what Milo was saying.

"It's not over yet. So… I need a volunteer to take Ilyeri's pack, seeing as her arm is shot. Cerianne's down, along with her own, so that shouldn't be a problem. Who'll carry Ilyeri's?"

Before thinking, Lucy put her hand up. Everyone stared at her like she'd grown a beard. "What? I can do it!"

"Anyone else?"

"Aww, c'mon, let her carry it. We can laugh at her when she collapses." Someone said, and Lucy glared at everyone.

"Seriously, I can."

"If you say so." Milo rolled her eyes and tossed Ilyeri's pack at Lucy, though the angle was misjudged and it hit Lucy squarely in the face, giving the other sentinels the laugh they were anticipating. "Right, anyone too injured to walk?"

Everyone shook their heads, though one of the girls from tent X-8 voiced the concern that she had a laceration in the thigh, but she'd see how things went. With that, they filed out of the house and began the trek back to camp, Lucy shouldering two packs. The distance between the two places was one part of the test, considering the path was fraught with danger and followed a winding and complicated path through the forests of Ashenvale. Navigation was done by forest-craft and tracking, testing the subtler skills that they had picked up over their grueling four months, and here Lucy was thankful that it was a team effort. How Mic managed to tell the different between trees eluded her.

Milo dropped back from where she was chorusing one of those annoying walking songs with the cheery X-8 girls to talk to Lucy. "I'm happy."

"I'm not. I feel like they cheated."

"They're orcs, of course they'll cheat."

"But Cerianne…" Lucy tried to communicate her disappointment. "She'll feel like you. Lonely… because we made friends with her and now she has to do that all again."

Milo started to shrug but stopped as a thought train derailed. "Well… there's not much to do now. We pass… and…"

"You don't actually know?"

Milo and Lucy stayed in awkward silence, listening to the X-8 girls chant.

_Everywhere we go_

_**Everywhere we goooo!**_

_People always ask us_

_**People always ask us!**_

_Who we are_

_**Who we aaaare!**_

_Where we come from_

_**Where we come from!**_

_And we always tell them_

_**And we aaalways tell them!**_

"_Bugger it, we're lost."_

_**Bugger it, we're-**_

"Wait… that's not the lyrics." The line stopped. Milo ran up to Mic, who was looking confusedly at a tree. Upon it was etched the elven rune for _halfway_, followed by _left half a league_ and _beware big fish_. Big fish being naga, who were slithering around some ruins to the west and sometimes ventured further into the forest. "Mic the prick, what's up?"

"Call me my name or I shan't tell you." She said monotonously.

"Mic the dick, what's up?"

"Try again."

"Mic… the… stick-up-her-ass?"

"Close."

Milo rolled her eyes. "Serious now, what's wrong."

"I didn't write these runes. I think they're from a previous training group who took a different path."

Milo squinted at them. "Ah… that's Eyeri's handwriting. I recognize that rune, she could never get left and west right, and she did those little curly things on her adjectives." She traced the _big_ with a little bit of affection. "Of course, she's off by Darkshore now."

"That's all well and good, but obviously the two tracks were so similar we slipped onto this one… So I'm not sure where we are."

"How long have we been following this one?"

"About… two hours."

Milo growled and bashed her head against the tree. "Oh, by Elune… We should just backtrack."

"We only have enough supplies for two more meals, supper tonight and tomorrow's breakfast…" one of the X-8 said thoughtfully. "Backtrack two hours… and it'll be nightfall and we'll be four hours hard walking behind where we're supposed to be."

Lucy caught up with the conversation and added her two copper. "Guys… there really isn't much difference between night and day here… could we not just walk late and sleep less?"

"Can everyone do with our less hours of sleep tonight?" Mic asked the congregation.

"If we had four less… then that would mean we have one hour, Micale." Ilyeri rolled her eyes. "We've been up since four this morning and laid siege to a town full of orcs. One hour of sleep tonight will not do if we're hiking through the undergrowth tomorrow."

"Plus, that area near the lake is like something from the day of the triffids."

A murmur of agreement washed over the Albatross Squad as they remembered the giant, carnivorous plants they had encountered on the way. Lucy hated the things with ruthless abandon, considering that her second ever scar came from one of them. The first was from her penknife, as tradition dictated, a thin, white line across the top of her hand. In retrospect, it seemed sort of sick, scarring oneself, but at the time it had been a great honour asked of her by Iridolan, a boy who she had adored from before she knew what adoration was. Now, one of those blasted plants had made another, whiplash-like mark on her thigh.

"We may as well not sleep at all…"

"Well, we need sleep, and we still have plenty ground to cover. I suggest we follow this path back, instead of ours. If this is halfway of it, then it's actually shorter than ours." Mic reasoned, hitching her pack further up her back.

"It is." Milo pitched in, remembering. "Tanalia wasn't setting it last time, so it's nicer."

"Can you even follow this one?" an X-8 asked curiously. "If you've lost _our_ trail, can you follow a strange one?"

Mic huffed. "Yes!" Several people snorted. "Oh, go flash-fry a naga. You want a coup? You'll not last an hour."

"She's right…" Milo said, resigned. "Let's keep on this path for about another two or three hours, then camp when we find a suitable place. That way, we stay on a real path and we don't lose the time."

"Is this a democracy?"

"It's a Milocracy." She answered shortly. "For I am omni-benevolent, thus omniscient also."

"You're using big words again." Lucy whimpered, annoyed at her lack of developed vocabulary. "I say we do what she says."

"Then it _is _a democracy… and we put it to the vote." Ilyeri said. "I say we backtrack and just double the pace tomorrow."

"Who votes for continuing?" Lucy, Milo, Mic and an X-8. "Four of us, three of you. We're continuing."

Grumpily Ilyeri and the X-8s followed then as Mic picked up the older trail, stopping every ten minutes or so to look at trees or sniff plants, things Lucy had no idea as to the usefulness of. They trekked across the tangled forests for about two hours before they came upon a small clearing, ringed by sturdy trees. Mic inspected the trees, finding runes of protection etched into them. They began setting up their crude tents, but as Lucy was laying her sleeping-sheets down, a huge roar sent her careening out of the shelter and into the main clearing, searching wildly for the source of the noise.

One of the trees in the clearing was alive.

"_Who comes to Laru's home?_" It asked, knotholes blinking into eyes. "_Laru has seen many elves in his home. They infest Laru's forest like termites._"

"Laru, we are the peacekeepers." Milo said, shaking. "We seek to stop the green men cutting down Laru's forests."

"_Talk not to me of the green men!_" Laru roared, his boughs creaking with fury. "_Laru detests the green men! Green men are worse than termites, elves! They burn! They burn!_"

"Yes, Laru, they burn. We train to stop them." Milo looked in terror at the giant, aggressive tree-man. "There is a clearing many leagues north, in which there were many green-men. We have returned them to the ground for you, Laru."

"_And still more come. Laru feels weak, old. Laru is immortal… old is not a feeling Laru likes. Laru… does not like elves, but Laru sees your deeds as pure…_"

Milo breathed out a sigh of relief, but Lucy realized she'd done or at least seen this before, maybe last time her group went through here. Why she hadn't told them before, she had no idea.

"_You are a different girl than last time…_" Laru said, his eyes narrowing, leaves ruffling. "_I see you, elf. Your deeds are pure, though your mind is mired in doubt and things you consider wrong… you are confusing. Laru is out of touch, perhaps…" _Laru's face softened. "_Elven termites, you may swarm, as long as you do not bite._"

"T-thank you, Laru."

"_Laru watches you_."

And like that, Laru the immortal tree-thing was a tree again.

Lucy stood open-mouthed, like the rest of them, looking at the lone figure of Milo, who stood, shivering slightly, in the middle of the clearing. She would have soiled herself faster than an incontinent furbolg and whimpered.

She wondered about what he'd said about Milo, that her deeds were pure but her mind was mired in doubt… and something. It'd seemed rather ominous, so she forgot it and settled with helping a rather shaky and taciturn Milo in setting up their little shelter. Rather than feeling scared that Laru was watching them, Luc suddenly perceived the woods as much safer, homely even. She realized that she'd been living in them for a while four months… that made her practically part of the woodwork anyway. It was peaceful.

"Lucy?"

"Hmm?"

"You're hammering that into your hand."

Lucy looked down and saw that indeed she was about to anchor their tent into her hand. Hastily removing the small metal pin from where it was stuck in the back, she sucked the wound in case of infection and cursed herself for being air headed and easily distracted. "Thanks for telling me."

"Well, I for one would like to see Lucy as a human tentpeg." Mic drawled from where she was airing a blanket a few paces away. "She'd be more useful than she is now."

"I don't see you carrying two packs."

"I don't see you helping us get back."

"Touché." Milo smirked. "Mic the thick can't keep a trail to save her life."

"I can keep one better than you _and_ Lucy."

"I'm no good at sniffing trees. That's discrimination." Lucy said mildly, used to the (playful) harassment that passed between them. "Speaking of discrimination… I feel bad about Cerianne."

"What the hellfire does she have to do with discrimination?"

"We discriminated against her when she first came. We thought she would like being a sentinel because her mother is one." Lucy explained. "Though that's probably more prejudice."

"Lucy, you're using many big words today." Milo smiled. "Are you sucking up for a nightsaber nibble?"

"If you brought any."

"Do I ever not have them?" Mic made a disgusted face.

"I will never understand why both of you enjoy pet food so." She rolled her eyes and turned back to her half-erected tent, humming the Lament of the Highbourne slightly off-key. They returned to their own dwelling and Lucy thankfully collapsed onto the blanketed floor, suddenly devoid of all energy. Her shoulders ached like she'd rubbed them with murloc oil and her head was throbbing unpleasantly. She winced and opened her eyes to see Milo standing over her, positioning a nightsaber nibble so that it would fall into her mouth. Obligingly, Lucy opened up and snapped the treat down, gobbling it, savouring the meaty flavour. _Say what you like_, she thought, _but these nightsabers have it good_.

"So," she asked mid-chew. "What was all this about pure deeds and a mired mind that woody was talking about?"

Milo shrugged. "He's not a teenager. He never was. Hormones don't affect him."

"Hormones? Like… um," Lucy struggled to remember a lesson she hadn't attended. "I give up."

"They're little spirits in our bodies," Milo explained, shifting off Lucy and sitting down stiffly, pulling out a skin of water. "When you're young, they think innocent thoughts, but because of all the dark energy in the air and the felweed in the drinking water, they get corrupted as we grow older, and they make us think bad thoughts."

"Bad thoughts?"

"Furbolgs and caves."

"Ah. Forget I asked." She took the water offered and took a great gulp, sighing in content. "I love water."

"As much as nightsaber nibbles?"

"Slightly less."

"Good girl." Milo threw another at her and she caught it in her teeth. "You're getting disconcertingly good at that. I'm overfeeding you."

"Nonsense. If anything, I've lost weight." Lucy looked mournfully at the place where her little tummy used to be. "I miss it."

"You miss weight?"

"I miss not feeling as though I'll blow away with the breeze."

"Get some muscles." Milo removed her breastplate and rolled her sleeves up, flexing. "Check those biceps."

"I don't want to look like Tanalia." She said sourly. "She's like a man-woman-prune-furbolg."

"She reminds me of Madonna Childsnatcher." Milo said thoughtfully, to Lucy's bewilderment. "She was a night elf, quite a famous bard, and then she started adopting a harem of children of different races. She had orcs and naga babies and everything, and then she got obsessed with body-building."

"Naga babies?" Lucy shuddered.

"Like murlocs but cuter."

"Ew." They laughed a bit, but both were exhausted and knew that the trek tomorrow would be horrible, especially with a front divided. Lucy slumped back on her sleeping roll and thought about a myriad of things: what Laru had meant about Milo, how furbolgs and caves really correlated, and what they'd do after training. It had seemed so… eternal, in that little camp in the woods, with an established routine, slowly surrounding herself with friends. She had liked it, in an odd way.

"I smell rock badger." Milo perked up from where she was whittling a piece of dead wood into the semblance of a naga baby. Lucy privately doubted her artistic potential before remembering something.

"Doesn't the Darnassian Honour Code of the Old Age have something about rock badgers in it?"

Milo raised her eyebrows. "You _did _listen in lessons. Yes, in Sucitivel, where all our ancient traditions and laws were laid out. '_Eat not of the rock badger, the mottled skimpywag or the greater striped gargldo._'"

"Why?"

"They taste like furbolg poo." Milo said casually, sticking her head from the tent. "Yum yum, furbolg poo for dinner."

"… How do we know it tastes like furbolg poo? Did somebody eat some?"

"My father always just told me that there are some people who get paid massive amounts to do that kind of thing."

"But we're eating rock badger tonight?" Lucy joined Milo in peering out into the clearing. "Will Laru not be pissy that we lit a fire?"

"To every question, young one, there is an answer." The older but shorter girl said sagely. "I just don't happen to give a flying furbolg."

"Very intellectual of you." Lucy smirked and walked out of their tent, inhaling rock badger, feeling very dizzy. "Ooh…"

"The toenails of the rock badger can be powdered into a very strong hallucogenic drug." Milo took her wrist and steadied her, leading her over to the fire. "When burnt, they give off a little vapour."

"So…" Lucy scratched her messy hair. "We're going to get high from dinner?"

"Yes."

"But then why-"

"They think it's stone badger. I swapped them."

"Milo! You can't do that! Everyone will get spectarac… specarac…" she tried to get the word out. "Ah, whatever."

"Precisely." Milo patted Lucy on the head like she was an overgrown dog. "Think of it as penance for Cerianne failing. Plus, I happen to know that Mic the parasitic is particularly susceptible to rock badger toenail vapour."

"That…" Lucy struggled with her wits. "That makes no sense."

"It doesn't have to."

"Why are you not affected?"

"I have a high tolerance."

"You've done it before, haven't you?" Lucy guessed, wondering why the grass was suddenly sweating. "Milo, bad girl."

Milo simply shrugged and grinned, looking at the camp go through various stages of befuddlement as the rock badger continued to roast on the crude spit. It was entertaining, if not a bit embarrassing; to see the group of girls you'd just raided an orc internment camp with start giggling over the fact that one of the trees had a branch that looked quite like a penis. Lucy sat next to Milo, watching the moon change colours, quite content and half-lucid, occasionally commenting. They ate the rock badger, and Lucy make a mental note to try furbolg poo just to irk Milo and her claim. It was nice, but tiring, and Lucy was tired beyond belief. She was dragged, mumbling, back into her tent by a highly amused Milo, who tucked her in and said goodnight, beginning her snoring almost immediately. Lucy stayed awake, listening to the sounds of the forest. She'd miss them, wherever she was going.

Slightly later, she drifted into a half-sleep, quite conscious of the disturbing noises that Milo made in her sleep, which were numerous and varied. She sometimes talked; too, conversations with her mother were common. Lucy felt sad for her, and lucky at the same time. Perhaps, she thought, she should have been nicer to her parents.

Like that, the pre-dawn hours swept in through holes in the stitching of their tent, bringing the smell of dead coals and dew to Lucy's nostrils. She groaned, not remembering if she'd slept or not. Cursing and fumbling in the dark, she sat up and began to put her armour on again, dreading having to wake everybody up. The likelihood was that they wouldn't be so amused after last night.

Stumbling out into the clearing, Lucy did up her trousers and tugged her boots on, wincing at the cold morning air. She had never been an early riser, but when Milo started talking to her mother, she felt as though she should be left in private. And besides, she'd get to wake Mic up. Looking at the sky, she judged the time at around four, wake-up time.

"WAKE UP!" she yelled in her loudest voice, causing birds to wildly fly out of the trees. She then went around all of tent individually and opened up their entrances, letting the freezing air enter. She never failed to be amused by the sight of sleeping or half-awake people. They looked like those carrion grubs that she'd read about once, all wrapped up in their sheets and wiggling around. Once, though, she had opened the tent belonging to the two girls who dropped out, though she hadn't thought anything of the fact that they were sharing a sheet and wearing no clothes. She was naïve like that, though it made sense presently.

"Motherfurbolg…" Mic muttered, squinting at her from where she was tangled in her sheets. Since Cerianne was gone, she had the whole tent to herself and had sort of spread out during the night, like a starfish. "Go away."

"Time to wake up!" she said gleefully, considering grabbing her cloak, it was that cold. "Mic the… arthritic."

"Big word." She mumbled. "It doesn't have the same gravitas as when Milo does it."

"Go stick your glaive-"

"Lucy, help me with breakfast." Ilyeri said from behind her. "If you insist on waking me up."

"Yes, yes." She started breaking up hard traveling biscuit and allocating individual portions. She could still smell rock badger around the central fire pit, so she warily avoided that. One by one, sentinels came shambling out of their tents and began to energize, talking and eating.

It took about twenty minutes after breakfast for Albatross Squad to be ready to leave, and the sun hadn't even risen yet. Milo and Mic stood at the front and looked pompous, as per usual. "Right. Let's get this day done and we can finally be away from this place!"

"Aye!"

"And let's stay on the right track this time!"

"Aye!"

-

A/N: That was murder XD took me ages to finish. The chant is an English thing, I think; I used to sing it at girl guides and brownies. I hope you're enjoying this, leave a review and a chocolate biscuit ;)


	5. Chapter 5

The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co

Chapter 5

"Twelve minutes and six seconds longer than it took your predecessors…" Tanalia shook her head in disapproval. "How standards are slipping…"

Lucy mumbled something rude under her breath as Albatross Squad shuddered to a halt, gazing out on the entrance to Silverwing Grove with wide, tired eyes. Their trek home had been slow but steady, only having to stop once because the girl with the bad leg got dragged into the undergrowth by a carnivorous plant as they skirted around the lake. After everything, Lucy thought very little of the loss of a toe, but the girl in question had had to be carried back, adding to their already-massive load. Waterproof tents, rations, armour and weapons were not light as all the other sentinels made them look.

"Well, I guess you all pass." Tanalia said grudgingly, to a massive sigh of relief. No whoops of joy- they were far too tired for such physical exertion. Just putting one foot in front of the other and ducking the occasional hissing forest-vine was a chore for Lucy. "Albatross Squad!"

It took them less that a second to stand at attention- if there was one thing the Tanalia 'The Torturer' Greywind was most strict on, it was her drill. Lucy had been plagued with the inability to sit down comfortably after she had been caught slouching and taken the brunt of the older sentinel's cane- that, she informed them, was enchanted with +5 bitchiness. Lucy's muscles all protested, but she shouted at them to stay rigid as the Torturer paced up and down, inspecting them, row by row, prowling like a nightsaber on felweed. "Dismissed!"

3, Lucy thought, 2, 1… and then she toppled over and met the cool grass in a welcoming hug, smiling contently. She was knackered.

"Oh, Lucy, you motherfurbolg, shift your lazy ass back to the tent before you pass out!" Milo said exasperatedly, giving her a gentle kick in the side. "You know I will leave you here."

"5 more minutes…"

"I'm leaving."

"30 more minutes…"

"Lucy."

"All right, all right…" she levered herself up, but felt a heavy boot on her back.

"Wonderful, Lucelia- since you're in the position, you can show me twenty push-ups." Tanalia's spiteful tone hit her like a mace to the privates.

Labouriously, Lucy pushed herself up and down twenty times, sweating with the effort, conscious that every fibre of her body was begging her to stop, and eventually managed it, much to Tanalia's distaste. When she had been told to do this four months ago, she had epic failed it and spent the whole day just having to do push-ups whilst everyone else got to learn swords. The next day she was punished for not knowing how to fight with a sword. Tanalia was a cruel and unusual punishment. She felt Milo hook her hands under her armpits and help her up slowly, petite frame shaking with the effort.

"Nice training with you, Sentinel Greywind." She saluted and turned around, her legs like lead and narrowly escaped kissing the floor thanks to Milo, who hauled her by the arms across the grass and through the maze of tents. "Haha, really showed her…"

"Yes, stick it to the woman by passing out in her presence. That should assert your maturity." Milo rolled her eyes. "Damn, Lucy, you're heavy."

"You're weak."

"No, I'm more tired than a gnome after a shot of whiskey." She growled, tossing Lucy into their tent. "I need sleep and I still have to wake up tomorrow for colours."

"Ah, screw colours…"

"Lucy, you don't 'screw' colours. Colours screw you." Milo shucked off her pack and felt ten stone lighter (which was about how much the pack weighed). "I passed."

"Yes, you did."

"You passed."

"Passed out, more like." Lucy shrugged and made a flying lunge (read: belly flop) onto her bed, welcoming the mattress that she had missed for four months. "Can I go to sleep now?"

"Everyone else went straight to dinner. We should too, I ate half a biscuit and the worm I found inside it this morning."

"I'm too tired!" Lucy whined, fumbling with her armour. "Help me."

"You'll have to learn to do it yourself some times." Milo rolled her eyes again and whisked her cloak off, then crossed to Lucy and knelt by her bed. "It's like changing a giant nappy."

"I'm probably dirty enough…" Lucy exhaled in content as cold air met her skin. "Ugh."

"You smell like a bachelor furbolg. Let's go wash."

Lucy wanted to sleep, but she didn't want her lovely mattress to get dirty, so she hoisted herself up and left everything but her spare clothes and towel in the tent, following Milo, both of them filthy, on the short walk to the small pool that served as the bath for the sentinels. There was an enchantment on it that heated it up, but after one hundred people had been in and out, it stopped and the water cooled down for the night. There were over five hundred sentinels in Silverwing Grove alone, and at least that number or more in Silverwing Hold, so if you wanted hot water, you had to sneak out of your tent at about four in the morning when the enchantment first activated.

They disrobed in the small clearing and gingerly got into the pool, hissing as the cold water touched their toes. Lucy had very bad memories of cold water from her bridge-cleaning days. "Oh, by Illidan's toenails, this is cold."

"Be thankful. This is summer."

"What is it like in winter?"

"It freezes over." Milo sunk below the water level and grabbed one of the bottles of soapy wash, lathering it into her hair with a content sigh. "Your pot belly is smaller."

"You shouldn't be looking!" Lucy covered herself, embarrassed. Never before had it occurred her to bother about her image or the fact that people judged her by it, but now she realized that she was body-shy and there was very little privacy here.

"Why not?" Milo asked as though it was a totally ordinary thing. "We're both girls."

"Well…" she remembered the magazines that had been under her bed. "Milo, are there any male sentinels?"

"No. Why?"

"There were issues of _Funtime_ and _Gnomes in Heat_ under my bed when I first got it." She explained. Milo looked at her and laughed hysterically, until Lucy splashed her with some icy water. "Seriously! And those two who had to leave introductory training… they were… fubolgs and caves and moonkin and stuff."

"So you're worried that some sentinels feed their horses from the other trough?"

"What?"

"You know. Summoning the imp in the other circle… parrying with the other blade… socketing the other gem… I'm running out of euphemisms."

"Big word." Lucy pouted. Milo smirked at her and offered her the soap wash, which she took carefully, because it was notoriously slippery and if they dropped it they'd have to dive down and look for it for ages.

"Basically, Lucy… the sentinels are all women. At this camp, there are five hundred females and one male who is already in a steady relationship. You do the sums."

"I'm bad at sums."

"You're bad at anything intellectual." Milo sighed. "Lots of girls are here for the ten-year standard term. They're not going to get out of it and they know it, plus there's no boys here, so they go with girls."

"Isn't there a rule about that? In Darnassus…"

"We're not in Darnassus. This isn't playgroup, it's war, and everyone here has just as much right as anyone else to enjoy themselves."

They stayed quite silent after that harsh statement. Dread settled in Lucy's stomach again. Milo was right- it was war, and they were done training. Where would they be sent now? They might die. Would there be a druid there to resurrect them? She hadn't seen any around. Death was not something a twenty-four year old elf thought about much, considering that they would have at least a millennia ahead of them.

Finishing their wash, Lucy forgot her dark thoughts for a minute as wonderfully soft and clean clothes slid over her newly washed skin, littered with bruises and cuts though it was. She wore a simple thick cloth shirt in regulation dark blue and a neat pair of grey breeches, but they felt like runecloth to her after the four months she'd spent in rough wool and calico.

Her stomach then reminded her that she'd had one and a half biscuits this morning (the half being Milo's, sans the worm) and she needed a great deal more to function properly. Slovenly and ungainly, Lucy dragged herself behind Milo and they headed towards the solid quarter, which was the only part of Silverwing Grove with actual permanent buildings. The refectory, which Lucy reminded herself that she had a shift in tomorrow evening, four or five private residences, stables, a small Inn for passing travelers and a first aid centre manned by three hideously overworked priests and their apprentices. The main one was behind Silverwing Hold, but this one was for overflow. Lucy realized that Cerianne would probably be in there.

"We should go to the medical building after dinner." She said to Milo. "To see Cerianne."

"We should… but we won't."

"Why won't we?"

"Because I can't feel my left leg, and she's probably stuffed with chocolate biscuits and medical paraphernalia, and wouldn't care if I were telling her she's won the Darnassus Lottery. I was." Lucy scowled.

"I still think she deserves the support. That boss-orc was a real banshee to her."

"You win some, you lose some."

"But we could draw some?" Lucy asked. "Tomorrow, we'll go."

Milo gave a resigned shrug and, with great effort, pushed through the light purple curtain that led to the refectory. The immediate rush of warmth and chatter did wonders for Lucy's tiredness, setting her at a wakeful ease. The sentinels behind the long counter handed them heavy plates of piping food and they found a place at the foot of one of the long tables, carved as if from the earth itself. There was no need to speak.

Until, of course, there was need to speak.

"Hold your knife and fork properly." Said Milo, looking up from her meal irksomely. "We're back in civilization."

"Make me." Lucy replied tersely, shoveling food into her mouth. "I grew up with chopsticks until that stupid human ruling that we should all know how to use these things. All different hands and prongs and sharp bits."

"You may have, but you can't use a knife and fork like chopsticks."

"Watch me."

"I am."

"Well, good then."

"You're not doing it very well." Milo smirked and took a swig of water. If there was one thing she did well, it was drink. Water, mead, anything wet in a glass. "Hold them like this."

Lucy stalwartly went back to eating with her cutlery as though they were chopsticks. "I can hold them whatever way I want. It's a free refectory."

"Actually…" Milo pointed at the sign on the wall.

_Please form an orderly queue.  
Queue-hoppers will be forced to run naked around Silverwing Grove.  
Please respect your superiors and use your knife and fork properly.  
xoxo Tanalia_

"Tanalia puts hugs and kisses on the end of her notices?"

"Tanalia doesn't write notices. They're all signed by her to enforce them, since everyone is scared silithidless of her." Milo said through a mouthful. "By Elune, this is good. I haven't had flash-fried naga this succulent in years."

"…this is flash-fried naga?"

"Tastes just like scorpid, but with more… _je ne sais qoui_."

"…you've tasted scorpid?"

"What did you think Tuesday special was?"

Lucy looked down at her food just in time to see it slither off her plate. With a slightly green face, she pushed it away from her a little. "I'm full."

Milo shrugged and devoured Lucy's plate as well, expertly impaling the runaway naga-meat with a precise throw of Lucy's knife into the wall. Now seriously worrying about what she'd just put in her stomach, Lucy nervously fidgeted with a particularly interesting knothole in the table, wondering how much food so small a girl could pack into her stomach. Having finished an inconceivably large amount of food, Milo stood up and patted her stomach appreciatively.

"Now we will sleep."

"I've been wanting to sleep since four months ago." Lucy moaned as they thanked the servers, coming out into the cool evening air. "On a bed… Elune's nipples, a real bed…"

"Language." Milo said lazily as she led the way through the tent maze. "And that sentence…"

"What about it?"

"Lucy, you naïve little critter…" she laughed. "When you're older."

"Don't say that! Everyone says that… I _am_ older. Even you're not that much older than me!" Lucy crossed her arms. "And I'm turning twenty-five soon."

"We should hold a party." Milo said thoughtfully. "Though I'm not sure who'd come."

"Cerianne. Mic the hypoglycemic?"

"Some party that would be. Four of us, in a tent…" the shorter elf looked let down. "Maybe not a party then. But you are getting a year older, more mature, growing into your god-given duties as a sentinel, protector of the peace…"

"That's a load of furbolg poo. I'm about as mature as Illidan in a toystore." Lucy recognized their tent through the gloom. "Tent sweet tent."

They collapsed and started sleeping.

-

Three days later, Lucy woke up.

Of course, she hadn't been sleeping for three days- there were all sorts of things she had to do, like be verbally bullied by Mic the caustic, guiltily avoid Cerianne, annoy Milo and do chores that came out of a seemingly bottomless list. Today, however, was special, because it was the first day that Lucy did not feel as though her body were about to implode. Plus, they were getting a new tent.

Scary as it was, they had passed introductory training. The X-8 girls could no longer be… the X-8 girls. They'd be the V-2 girls… but Lucy guessed she'd just keep mentally referring to them as the X-8 girls. Tent Y-3 (Milo, Lucy, Ilyeri, Ken and Deri) were becoming W-13. How exciting was that?

She packed her meager pack and took a last look under the moldy mattress that had _Funtime, Gnomes in Heat_, and Lucy's personal least favourite, _Massive Swords_, thinking that in a weird way, she'd miss the assurance that there was porn under the bed next to her. Before she knew it, they were off, winding their way through the tent maze and to a new row, which looked marginally less shabby than her previous accommodation. Ducking through the light grey tent flap, Lucy immediately claimed the middle bed, now knowing that the outer ones tended to get mildew-infested, and flopped down on it, inhaling the different scent of person that mushroom-clouded up from it.

"It smells funny." She said simply as Milo claimed the bed next to her. "Like not us."

"Thank Elune for that." Milo crinkled her small, light-blue nose. "You smell like week-old kobold pie."

"Thank you." Lucy rolled her eyes and began making her bed. "You have a shift at the refectory tonight."

"You know my schedule now?" Milo did the signature-sexy elven-eyebrow raise before settling down on her bed and sighing. "I wonder what we'll do next?"

"Hopefully something easy. Or fun. Or both." Lucy shook her head, scraggly purple hair flying everywhere. "Not if Tanalia has a say in it though."

"I'd quite like to go up to Darkshore. Maybe guard Auberdine for a bit- I could introduce you to my father."

"We won't." Ilyeri stooped to enter the tent, her ashy hair blanketing her face. "We're going to Dolanaar."

A collective groan rose, fell and carried on for a bit before slinking off into the corner. Nothing ever happened at Dolanaar. It was dull, boring and filled with wannabe-heroes, cocky on their way out of Shadowglen after poking a few spiders. Lucy knew of the place, though had never been there. Ken perked up a little. "I'm from Doly. It's totally not that, like, boring. There's a great mixed night at the inn every other Friday afternoon."

"You're really reassuring me." Lucy rolled her eyes. "When are we leaving anyway, Ilyeri?"

"Dunno." She shrugged, sitting down stiffly on her bed, nursing her arm. "Soon, I expect. Junior Sentinels never stay here that long unless they're active in Warsong Gulch."

"That place gives me the willies." Deri remarked, looking uncomfortable. "I had to deliver a letter to one of the sentinels stationed there… the war did horrid things to those women."

"Der, you like the willies." Said Ken thoughtlessly, with the ease of someone who knew that she wouldn't take offence at anything that she said to her.

"Willy is such an unattractive word, though." Deri insisted thoughtfully, curling a lock of dyed crimson hair around a long, slender finger. "There are so many other euphemisms that one can use to keep conversations T-rated… enchanted staff… wand… massive sword… pointy dagger…"

"We get the idea, babe." Ken lightly thwacked her on the side of the head. "So… who's got the list?"

The dreaded list that contained all the chores they had to do every day. From running letters to scrubbing bedpans to sharpening pencils, everyone always had something to do from sunup to sundown. Lucy was usually assigned the worst jobs- so far, she had washed clothes so grime-encrusted they should have dropped in Gnomeregan, polished armour until the glare from it had left her with sunspots behind her eyes for hours, cleaned out an entire block of latrines and done so much washing up she had thought her hands could wrinkle no more. Oddly enough, nobody had the list.

"Nobody has the list." Lucy stated dumbly. "Do we not have a list? I need a list. Life is nothing without the list."

Four sets of incredibly-incredulous sensuously-sexy enticing elven-eyebrow elevations later, they had gained one glum Lucy, but not a list. "I suppose one of us should go get it?" Ilyeri asked meekly, stroking the heavy cast on her arm, which was inlaid with runes for swift healing and an anti-itching spell that Lucy wished was on her mattress. "But I don't know where it comes from."

The five of them stiffened.

"You don't suppose…?"

"Could it be?"

"If it's _there_…"

"I don't want to think on it."

Lucy scratched the back on her neck where there was a sore, red lump from the collar of her newly washed informal uniform. She didn't quite understand. "What's all this about? You're jabbering like dragonkin at a boy scout meeting."

"The list, Lucy. The list could be _there._"

"Where is there?"

"_You-know-where_."

"I really don't. Enlighten me."

Milo gulped and spoke in a hushed voice. "Alright, alright. Don't make me say it more than once. It's the t-t… ta-t." She sucked in a breath. "The tactical planning room."

"That tactical planning room?" Lucy said incredulously and rather loud, making all four other girls rush to cover her mouth in horror. Swatting them off, she looked at Milo quizzically. "What's wrong with the ta-"

"The _you-know-where_."

"Okay. What's wrong with the _you-know-where_?"

Ilyeri gawped at her as though it was the most obvious thing next to her eyebrows. "It's a legendary place." She said reverently. "Everything happens in there."

After about another ten minutes of answers like this, Lucy got bored and accepted that she shouldn't go into the tactical planning room.

Around midday, with the occupants of W-13 were overcome by serious anxiety. Ilyeri's long fingernails tapped and fidgeted on her cast, while Milo and Lucy had been back to Y-3 and excavated all the porn, and were currently cutting and pasting various pages into a collage in the likeness of Tanalia. Then, all of a sudden, the flap of their tent whipped back and stood there was none other than Cerianne, looking as close to angry as she could get. Lucy dropped the issue of _Funtime _(_Dwarf Special: Under the kilt_) and fearfully met her eyes. A long, heady silence followed.

"Bags-I the spare bed." She said quietly, setting her small sack down on the last, slightly damp bed. "Though once you all leave I'll take a nicer one, I suppose."

"Cerianne." Ilyeri said brusquely. "You recovered fine?"

"As fine as one might when mauled with a spiked mace," she said on the off-hand, making her bed quicker than Lucy could figure out which was her left hand and which was her right. "It does hurt a trifle, but Sister was liberal with her opium."

"Ah," Ilyeri tried to scratch the inside of her cast. "That's good."

"Wait," Lucy's brain caught up in the awkward silence that followed. "You said that you'd take a nicer bed once we leave?"

"Yours or Amelia's, perhaps. What of it?"

"You mean we really are leaving?"

She turned to look at Lucy, brow furrowed. "Of course. You head for a duty rotation tomorrow morning. You passed introductory training. You're junior sentinels. You do duty."

They looked at each other dubiously. "That's why there's no list."

"Well done, genius." Ilyeri said with exasperation, looking with ire at Lucy. "I told you so. We're going to Dolanaar?"

"Dolanaar..."

Milo groaned. "Oh, you just had to put kobolds in my Gnome-e-Ohs. Doly? Nothing _ever_ happens in Doly."

"It's won _Least Interesting Token Post-Starter Area Town of the Year_, like, six times in a row." Ken and Deri said. "And there are no cute boys. They're all old and devoted to 'helping young adventurers'."

"I thought Khranos won this year?"

"It was a tied vote, so they went on the _Ashenvale Post_ poll." Ken (Deri?) explained lightly. "It was the first article featuring Dolanaar since… since that innkeeper's pet rabbit got injured by a stray strigid owl."

The others nodded morosely. "Is it really that bad?" Lucy asked. "I've never been."

"Oh, yes." Milo spoke from where she had returned to creating Tanalia's left ear from the legs of a draenei, guilty as hell and not wanting to look Cerianne in the face. "Well, I guess that's the point, really. We're about as useful as a chocolate leper gnome in combat, so we should be stationed at a place that never gets attacked."

They agreed and started to find something to do other than feel guilty about Cerianne. "You needn't try and find something to do other than feel guilty about me," she said mildly. "I am aware of my own failures, thank you very much. I'll not be subject to your stilted sympathy, Amelia."

"My sympathy isn't stilted. Cerianne, I've been there, done that, failed the same as you did. I'm just guilty that I passed and you didn't."

"Banshee." Cerianne swore at her, against her usual demeanor. "You're as sorry as a naga who's just lost his virginity. You're indefinitely pleased that you've passed- it's our nature."

"Thanks for the psychology lesson," Ilyeri spoke up snidely. "Cerianne, can't you just accept that you're not a cookie? We're all cut from the same piece of dough, sentinel cookies… you're a gingerbread man. Woman, sorry. Gingerbread woman. And gingerbread sucks at fighting, but cookies are tough. Mmm… I'm hungry now."

"Don't say that. Now I am to. Is it still lunchtime? Can we grab something?" Ken/Deri said, and the whole tense atmosphere puttered and fizzed out like a gnome's sex life. "We can find a higher-rank sentinel in the refectory anyway and ask about Doly."

Agreeing and forgetting their previous trepidation in the face of Cerianne, W-13 filed out into the infinite dimness of Ashenvale and trod across the tent-maze to the solid quarter. Lucy saw the world through different eyes. Well, since she was shortsighted but didn't accept it, she only saw the world closest to her, but the thought was still there. She felt older and more responsible, and a bit taller. At least that enchanted ink in her hair was beginning to grow out, though she still looked a state. Thinking randomly that she would quite like to get her ears pierced, she bounded behind Milo as they reached the big, wooden building, the smell emanating from it making her drool slightly. Lucy loved food.

Milo received shouts of greeting and cheerful acclamation as she entered. She had duty tonight in the refectory, and everyone knew that Milo was the best person to have duty with. She was an excellent chef (possibly her only useful skill, if you don't count wiggling her ears and that tongue-roll thing) and insisted on doing all the jobs herself. Plus, all the food would be superb that night, so the patrons would go back to their tents smiling and patting their stomachs.

The thought of stomachs brought Lucy back to her own, which was protesting vehemently at her ill treatment of it. Taking a heavy wooden tray, she dutifully queued behind Ken and Deri but before Ilyeri, because Milo was taking her tray on account of her useless arm. Porcelain was a human convention, night elves preferring thin wooden bowls and dishes, but the bowls here were so small Lucy couldn't get a decent meal in unless she scarfed someone else's too. Sullen, she accepted the steaming curry and helped herself to a very generous spoonful of rice, thinking about Dolanaar. She'd have to pass through Darnassus to get there… she might see Pylli and Kolya there. What would they think of her? Darnassus would laugh at her. The infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather wasn't tricking any more. She was quashed, trained, and older. The thought made her suddenly quite sad.

Sitting down on a rough wooden table, she absentmindedly pushed food into her mouth with a spoon (not chopsticks for curry) and leaned the side of her head on her hand. A sense of bewildering emptiness accosted her then and Milo, perceptive as ever, turned to her with a soft smile, so unlike the elfin grin she usually offered. "You okay?"

"Yes." Lucy said quietly, pushing cubes of murloc liver marinated in a creamy pumpkin sauce with hints of silverleaf (for extra vitamin X) around her bowl. Little grains of rice stuck to her spoon and she flicked them off. "Feeling funny, I guess."

"You don't want to go back to Darnassus, do you?" Milo asked thoughtfully, pulling Lucy into a private conversation, away from Ken and Deri who were arguing lightheartedly over the murloc eye Ilyeri had found in her curry. "Can I ask why?"

"I'll be the laughing stock of Darnassus." Lucy explained. "Everyone knew me. They knew I tricked all over the city and they knew that I was taken away to train with the sentinels. Now, they'll see me… and they'll think I'm broken. A stiff. An adult. And think of my guild- the Pranksters- to them, I'll just be like Iridolan and Yerria, who left and got older, who don't matter any more."

"Who are those two?"

"Iridolan and Yerria?" Lucy asked. Milo nodded and took a drink of water. Milo loved water. "Leaders of the pranksters before me. Yerria became a priestess. Iridolan left me to train as a druid."

"He left you?"

Lucy went red, or as red as someone with purple skin can go. "I meant us. He left us, the guild."

"You fancied him." She stated levelly, looking up from her curry and into Lucy's eyes. Unsure, Lucy held her gaze, searching Milo's, which glowed a light orange. It was a popular misconception that night elves' eyes were just glowing pits, but they weren't if you looked closely. Lucy's brow creased as she saw something she perhaps hadn't wanted to behind the subtle glow.

"'Suppose." She mumbled, going pinkish. She had like Iridolan more than she probably should have, but in all fairness, Lucy had been young and unaware that what she felt tiptoed across the platonic line. "Not anymore. I haven't seen him in two years."

"But you might see him when you go back to Darnassus?"

"Maybe. Last I heard he was around Dolanaar, running errands." Lucy's eyes moistened. "Oh, Elune's nostrils… Milo, I couldn't see him again."

"You may not have a choice in the matter." She took a thoughtful bite of murloc, eyebrows a-go-go. "This Iromelan must be something special to deserve your attention."

"Iridolan." Lucy corrected. "He was lovely to me. All kind and gentle with lovely golden eyes and tousled green hair that fell wavy over his face…"

"You are so whipped."

"Am not!"

"Lucy, you just made it glaringly obvious. Whatever you say, you fancy this Iremelin fellow, and if we meet him in Doly, so be it, but you have to show him that you're older now. Not the little kid I'm going to presume you were, hugging onto his leg and gazing all googly-eyed up at him, but a real, attractive young woman."

"I'm not attractive."

"No, you aren't." Milo rolled her eyes, Lucy pouting. "Lucy, you're cuter than a baby gnome. Confidence is key."

"Ohmygosh. Baby gnomes are sooooooo cute!" Ken/Deri gushed, ruining their aura of intelligent conversation. Lucy, awkward, turned down to her food. Milo had called her cute. What did 'cute' mean, anyway? It was hard to be ugly if you were a night elf, but some managed it (Tanalia sprung to mind), though Lucy hadn't really thought much about how she looked. She wasn't like Ken and Deri, always garrulous about everyone's appearance, from Annriden the Librarian (the only male in Silverwing Grove) and how 'super-duper blow you brains out and cover them in chocolate' hot he was, to Mic the quick-to-take-offence (adjectives used for her, unfortunately, are too sensitive to go to print).

"I guess we'll see." Milo said uncertainly, setting her spoon down. "Whatever happens, Lucy, you made the right choice. Coming here."

Snorting, Lucy stole a glance at Milo, who was unhappy through her impossible white hair, falling across her face and down to her neck. "Yeah, and Tanalia can smile."

"What was that?"

"Nothing, Sentinel Greywind."

"Nothing?" eyebrows rose and nearly knocked the beams holding the roof on loose. "Oh, what fun you'll be having in Dolanaar, Miss Dawnfeather. How do you like latrines?"

"They are my life and soul, Sentinel Greywind. Every…" Lucy paused, searching for a big word. "Every corpuscle of my being yearns to be near them again."

"Good, good." With a knowing smirk, Tanalia left them alone to their last days of freedom.

-

A/N: Sorry that took so long! It's been lying on my Mac, nearly finished, for a couple of weeks now . Hope you found this funny. So, Albatross Squad are off to Dolanaar… will it be truly as boring as they assume? Let's hope not.

Please review! Are you liking the comedy and the constant references to WoW pop culture? Y or N? Feedback, people!


	6. Chapter 6

Right, this is a repost, because I was not at all happy with the last chapter 6. It went silly and I want plot, no fillerishness. Sorry for taking this long, but I think this is MUCH better than the thing I posted a couple days ago.

A/N: Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers! To name you personally: ravenaurelius, Zetsuke, J.S. Daniels, Anon, Leirah and M.S. Fisher. Very sorry that this has been a late chapter, I've been leveling my main, who is ironically called Alt, to 80. Catch me on Silvermoon EU on Alteon if you'd like to talk :)

Right, this is a repost, because I was not at all happy with the last chapter 6. It went silly and I want plot, no fillerishness. Sorry for taking this long

The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co

Chapter 6

Lucy was quite upset, because she'd just lost her fifty-sixth game of cheat in a row and it wasn't even elevensies yet.

"I find it interesting and perplexing, my dear, that you're so bad at this game." Keldamyr mused as he reached the small table at the back of his inn where the sentinels were slacking off. Setting down a small tray of drinks, he smiled lightly before deciding to heed Milo's forceful gesticulation behind Lucy's back and not tell her that the whole thing was rigged. "Enjoy the drinks."

Lucy didn't thank him but sulked, the heavy weight of her eyebrows making her scowl even more hilarious. "Aww, Lucy, don't sulk. Sulk when you're on patrol and some young elf asks you for directions to the tailoring trainer."

Ken and Deri laughed. "Didn't you tell the poor thing that the only tailoring trainer was camped in Starbreeze Village?"

"Yes, but those furbolgs are easy to run through. She was a druid, she could just go into paladin form and bubble." Milo snorted, taking a long sip of her drink. "But Lucy was best. You should have seen what she did to that rogue who kindly asked her if she'd been separated from her parents… he couldn't sit down for three days."

Somewhere in the distance the sound of dying gnomes was heard, which meant that Tanalia was angrier with them than usual for skiving off when they were supposed to be mucking out the stables. Lucy, who detested animals, had taken to simply goading one of the strigid owls with pieces of meat until they attacked her then hiding in Byancie, the first aider's small sick bay.

The four of them- Lucy, Milo, Ken and Deri (because Mic the less than aromatic was taking a shower) downed their drinks an groaned as they stood up, thanking the innkeeper Keldamyr and filing out amidst sniggers from the inn's occupants. Though a perk to being employed by the government of Darnassus was huge subsidies on food and drink, there was no Sentinel's union with which to strike, meaning that they had to do everything asked of them, all the time, by anyone, just like a public toilet. On top of less than bearable sentinel tasks, Albatross squad had rescued a hunter's pet spider from a tree (Lucy had the poisoned bite marks to prove it), covered for the children's swimming lessons in Lake Al'Ameth and had to apprehend a shady saytr dealing dieting pills laced with powdered saronite.

"What time do you call this?" Tanalia asked rhetorically as they lined up, joining Ilyeri and the X-8 girls in rank.

"About nine…" Lucy squinted at the town sundial, several meters behind Tanalia. "Forty five?"

"Ten thirty, Lucy, but a valiant effort nonetheless."

"You win some, you lose some."

"Silence!"

They were silent.

"Good. I have here the list." Tanalia brandished a long scroll in front of them. "Today's duties are as follows: Junior Sentinels Farsky, Treereach and Cloudbough, you're to help Master Tallonkai Swiftroot with his sudoku."

Lucy wondered why Night Elves had such ridiculous surnames- dual nouns or adjectives got really confusing if you had such a short memory and attention span as she did. She knew people's first names, but not their second, because it didn't really make much difference what kind of family you were from in the sentinels, unless you were Mic. Ilyeri, Ken and Deri stepped out of rank, but Lucy had already forgotten their surnames.

"Embershine, Dawnfeather, Everglow, you're scourging algae off the moonwell- report to Master Moonrage and bring weapons."

"Why weapons?" Lucy whispered to Milo upon hearing their names called.

"Well, this is Teldrassil- the plantlife is ADHD. I don't think the algae will much like scouring."

"Ah."

They broke off and picked up their glaives from where they rested again the wall of Dolanaar's guardhouse, which was really a glorified tree trunk, hollowed out and filled with small beds. Lucy did a double take as she picked hers up, remembering how heavy it was. Beside her, Milo took a long swig of water from her decanted and frowned, swilling the contents around before shrugging and corking it again. Milo was good like that, always drinking her 6 pints of water per days and sticking to her recommended daily allowance of crispy spider meat and the like.

Since it was Hallow's End, Dolanaar was seeing a temporary influx of returning people of all races looking to plunder Keldamyr's massive bucket of candy- this, however was causing a couple of problems. There was no piping system in Dolanaar, and though mages could conjure themselves baths whenever they wanted, other inclinations were not so lucky, and since the small elvish town was in the middle of nowhere, people usually had to stay the night before leaving the godforsaken place for good. Many had taken to bathing in the moonwell, which of course caused not only a build up of dermatological offshoots, but also many forgot to dispel their armours or magical auras before entering. Warlocks and their demon armour had aggravated the usually benevolent algae and it had taken to wrapping itself around the ankles of people, pulling them under and even drowning a paladin who had left his hearthstone with his clothes.

"Lucy, you've stopped complaining. Are you feeling alright?" Milo asked as they indolently strode over to the moonwell.

"Yes," she said, her mind a million miles away. "Where is Mic?"

"Mic the trick but no treat?" Milo made a face. "Probably still showering, using all the tank water, no doubt."

Since if they did their job as fast as possible, Tanalia might not given them something else to do, Lucy and Mic got to work after eschewing several frolicking death knights who had thought it funny to pour masses of bubble-bath into the moonwell and then freeze it, making their job twice as hard.

"Ouch!" Milo winced and flailed, having just been pulled over and landed on her rear by the fel-algae. Viciously she cut the tendril off swearing colourfully and telling the algae exactly what she'd do to its mother. "Lucy, this is useless. It regrows and glows more every time we slash it."

"Maybe instead of treating the effect, you should prevent the cause," came Mic's dry voice from one of the arches placed for decorum around the moonwell. Gracefully with an _air du Batman_, she jumped off it, landed smoothly and then got cramp in her thigh, keeling over and swearing. In a few seconds, however, she was up and dusted off, nose higher than a gnome on felweed.

"In Darnassian?"

"Stop slicing the fronds and attack the root." Mic said exasperatedly. When she came closer, Lucy noticed that she smelled funny, like soap but… odd. Shrugging, she sat on the edge of the moonwell and was content to let the little weeds tickle her toes while she stared blankly at the other two working. Introductory training seemed miles away, and in a strange way, Lucy missed it. She missed the structure and the closeness that she had felt with the rest of Albatross Squad- you could even say she missed the hard work. Here, in Dolanaar, where each hour passed as a day and menial tasks occasionally provided some interest, she was bored.

"Hello?" Milo waved a hand in Lucy's face, distracting her. "We found the head honcho algae mother thing."

Lucy looked up to see Mic tangled in a large, ruthless-looking lattice of dangerously green glowy algae. Noncommittally, she hefted her glaive from where it sat rusting and wiggled the little plants off her toes. "How do we kill it?"

"I think we should freeze it, but Mic says set it on fire."

"Burn, motherfurb-" Mic managed before being sucked back into the fray, flailing like a magikarp.

"Language, dear," A passing visitor to Dolanaar said sagely, peeking out from under [Kel'Thuzad's Parasol of Sun Protection] while strolling. Tutting to herself, she closed the parasol and let out a fiery bolt of magic that made the entire moonwell explode. "Sentinels these days, they let anyone in…"

Lucy, smoldering slightly, was rather confused.

-

About three hours later, Mic was smarmy, Lucy was grumbling and to everyone's surprise, Milo was angsty too. There was not much that could stifle her enthusiasm, but it seemed that today something had. In fact, if Lucy hadn't known her better, she would even say she was grouchy.

They were out in North-north-eastern Teldrassil, near the Wellspring River; and it was marshy land, each step sucking Lucy's standard-issue leather boots deeper into the bog. Every now and again, they would come upon the wildlife, skittering beneath the canopy, but were careful to avoid arousing it- their mission was, this time, of real importance. Lucy could not deny how nervous that made her feel, nor how elated. She was being a proper sentinel, saving Teldrassil from distress and danger- or so she hoped she would.

Tanalia had sent them out after a long lunch hour in which the town herbalist had examined some chunks of the fel-algae they had managed to preserve from the blaze. The conclusion had not been nice- as it turned out, the fel-algae was not borne of visiting warlocks or the like, but from the land itself. Night Elves knew that Teldrassil was not sanctified, but the signs were slow to show and few- now, it seemed, the same thing that had agitated the timberlings was causing the water in the moonwells to lose its cleansing properties, instead becoming a danger.

A creaking played havoc on Lucy's elven hearing as she frowned around the mossy riverbank- she knew of timberlings and they had been informed of the dangers, but she hated suspense.

"There." Mic breathed quietly, pointing to the silhouette of a lumbering, misshapen form across the muddy river. "Elune, they're big."

"Bigger than the ones by Lake Al'Ameth." Lucy realized, comparing them. "What does that mean?"

"That they are closer to whatever's making the weeds in the moonwell PMSsy." Milo explained hurriedly, scratching the back of her neck under a tidy ponytail. She grimaced and looked around, her eyebrows accentuating her apathy, which was unusual for the peppy elf. "Let's be quick."

Since Lucy was not stealthy, that tactic was quickly discounted. They tracked the timberling at length further north up the river until the branches of Teldrassil came dangerously close and the cascading rush of the Wellspring Waterfall was the pervading sound.

With a great roar from behind them, the clever timberlings spring out, obviously thinking to have fooled their pursuers. Lucy, heart beating a million times a minute, brought her glaive up to counter bark-like claws that raked at her face, staggering backwards with the creature's sheer weight. It launched for another assault and this time she wasn't so lucky, her footing on the slimy, muddy ground not half as good as the timberling's. She went down under it, pressed up again the mass of foliage that covered its body. It was slippery and cold, giving off a thick and cloying fragrance. Struggling, she managed to roll out and down the bank, straight into the shallow side of the river. Soaked and covered in mud, she scrambled back up and wildly pushed her glaive into the timberling's broad chest, seeing it go down with pleasure.

Quickly returning to the others, Lucy was surprised that they weren't holding out well. The timberlings numbered at least 6 or 7 and they had the advantage of natural environment, weight and surprise. Milo took a nasty claw to the thigh, shouting some curses and furiously chopping the offending timberling's head clean off, panting and wincing. Mic was doing slightly better, fending two off with deft jabs of her glaive, and this was on of the few times that Lucy was glad to have her around.

Another timberling came at her and she decided that hack 'n slash was the plan, poking the ugly elemental in his (or hers… it was difficult to tell) soggy face. Her footing got better as she dug her heels into the bank, finding a solid base underneath. The timberling, quite stupidly, had seen its brother/sister/son/daughter push her into the river and thought it could do the same again, but Lucy quickly leapt out the way and jammed the blunt end of her glaive into it's head. She reckoned it was dead by now.

With a gleeful shout, Lucy saw Milo covered in bits and pieces of timberling and panting, glaive impaled onto a stack of two of them. Slightly amazed but pleased, she jogged back up the bank in time to see Mic backhand one in the face and slam it into a tree, the branch sticking squarely into its chest.

"Two." Lucy said. When they had been in a good mood, during lunch, they decided to keep a tally of how many beasties they downed in combat.

"Three." Said Milo.

"Six."

"Liar!"

"Six." Mic shrugged again, gesturing to the bodies of the timberling strewn around. "You doubt me, you can count."

"Banshee." Lucy muttered under her voice, but it was not heard over Milo's sudden lurch and acclamation of pain. Distracted from her self-pity she whirled around to see her best friend clutching her thigh, teeth clenched in agony.

"eluuuuune, this hurts like a gnomish hangover." She complained, looking at the blood slowly seeping out. "Can we go back?"

"I bought bandages." Mic interrupted, rooting around in her pack until she pulled a fresh, herb-smelling roll of wool from deep inside. "Stay still, I need to pull the splinters and the bark out. Lucy, can you fill my canteen with river-water so we can clean the wound?"

"Aight," se agreed, taking the heavy, metal water container, glad to have something useful to do. Injuries were nothing strange to her any more, having been bitten by a bear during introductory training, and she knew that you had to handle them quickly and methodically. She filled the canteen and returned to where Milo was howling in protest.

"Everglow, the next thing you tug out of my thigh, I swear I will- furbolg!"

"I would quite like to see you furbolg." Mic replied dryly, accepting the canteen silently and generously sloshing it over the wounds. "I don't see why you're complaining so much- it's only a couple of shallow gouges."

"I'll shallow gouge you in a minute."

"I'm sure." With practiced swiftness she bound the wound tightly and secured it, allowing Milo to slip her trousers back on with a much protest. "Can you walk?"

"Yes." The shortest elf replied, testing out her bad leg. "No more fighting, but walking is fine."

"Right then!" Lucy spoke for the first time in a while. "Timberlings don't usually get that aggressive, yes?

"No for ages, no… there's been worry about them for a while, and we're trying to find out if the reason they're being corrupted is the same reason that the fel-algae wants to play kiss-chase." Milo said sagely, but her face was contorted and Lucy suspected she was feeling much more pain than her wound warranted. "The Wellspring River is as good a place as any to start."

"Since the timberlings make their homes here." Mic added, closing her pack and hefting it onto her straight back. "I think we should take some timberling samples back to Dolanaar for that herbalist to fiddle with."

"Agreed." They set to work taking cuttings from different parts of the timberling corpses. Skin (if it could be called that), muscle, sap in a small vial. It was Milo who pulled out some decisive evidence.

"Look at this." She said quietly, hefting a huge ball of moss and tissue out of the cavity that had been a timberling's chest. "It's a tumour. A freaking huge tumour." She took an experimental squeeze of the mass and with a shriek from Lucy it burst, dripping dark green liquid down Milo. "Oh, by Elune…" she said airily. "Just what I need. More unknown substances all over me. Let's just hope it doesn't stain, the lady who runs the launderette by Shadowglen practically lynched me when I got some grass stains on my trousers last time."

They found, worryingly, that each timberling sported many of these tumours. They bagged a few and added them to the samples before, as by the Teldrassil Country Code, moving the bodies off the designated footpath- not that there was one, but bureaucracy would get you done for anything these days.

Continuing up the river, almost to the edge of Teldrassil itself, they found little else. Mic took some samples of the plants that grew by the side of the river and Milo complained a lot, but mostly Lucy was quiet. She felt and odd sense of foreboding and a lack of innocence that annoyed her- it was perhaps that she had not seen Kolya and Pylli in Darnassus. In fact, she hadn't seen hide or hair of any of the pranksters' guild, and could not shake the feeling that they had forgotten her, that she was just another adult to them now.

It was classic angst and she knew it, but nevertheless it was hard to let go of. What was bringing her down, also, was Milo's mood. She hadn't realized before how constant her bright-eyed best friend was, how selflessly enthusiastic. Sighing slightly, she looked around the riverbank one last time to check they hadn't left anything.

"Mic." She said suddenly, eyes focusing on something. "There, in the water. Something shiny."

"Lucy, I've already told you, we're not going to indulge your magpie-like habits…"

"No." she tried to get her sense of rightness, of burning urgency across. "It's not that… look at it."

With a 'harrumph', Mic turned back on herself and came to stand before Lucy, looking into the clearish water. She search for a few seconds, but quickly found the object that was drawing Lucy's undivided attention. "Pyroblast me, you're right." She took off her pack and stripped her heavy layer of armour off and looked doubtfully at the rushing river. "I don't think I can get it, the current's too strong."

"Do we have rope? We can attach some around your waist."

"The first good idea you've had since birth." Mic said, then added as an afterthought. "But birth wasn't a good idea, either."

"haha, you're side-splitting, Mic." Milo said tiredly. Without any warning, she pushed the girl off the bank and into the water. Mic flailed for a few second but quickly found her footing in the shallows- the water just up to her shoulders.

"What the hell was that for, Amelia!" she raged. "We just said that the current was too strong to go in without help!"

Milo shrugged and turned to sulk. Lucy, confused but more aware that Mic was in danger (as much as she detested her). She pulled rope from her pack and helped the aristocratic elf out of the water, tying it in a harness around her waist and shoulders, deciding to think on Milo's strange behaviour later.

"Going down." Mic said humourlessly as she slipped into the lukewarm river. Autumn was fast approaching, and this was the warmest it would get. She made several unsuccessful dives before finally surfacing with the object, grinning like Lucy had never seen her before.

"Lucy, this is cool. It's like a trinket thing." She accepted the slow pull out of the current as Lucy strained her tiny muscles to pull her weight in. "It's pure silver, I think, so a bit tarnished… but the funny thing, I was embedded in the ground really hard- I had to tug at it, even though it wasn't secured or anything."

"It was probably heavier than you thought."

"Maybe." Mic exited the water, looking a right state in her damn underclothes. I think that now is the time to go back."

"Did you bring a change of clothes?" Lucy asked, looking at her in al her soggy glory. "You'll catch a summer cold if you walk back like that."

"I did…" Mic swiftly changed and Lucy turned around, looking at the trees with renewed interest. She didn't like watching people change- it seemed like such a personal activity. It was then, remembering her conversation with Milo in the public baths in Silverwing Grove, which she realized that the third member of their troupe was missing.

"Milo!" she shouted, making a baby strigid owl protest as she woke it up. "Milo? Hello?"

"She's gone. Leave her, she's angsty."

"I should talk to her. I dunno what's wrong." Lucy sighed and coiled the rope back up clumsily.

"I doubt it's something you did; it never is, trust me." Mic shook her long mane of dark hair out so that Lucy go a little sprayed. "I have three older sisters and two younger brothers- it happens when you live with someone."

Lucy was stunned. "Five siblings?"

"Yes. All of my sisters are higher-ranking sentinels and one of my brothers is the Astranaar Emisary to Fandral Staghelm."

"And the other one?"

"We don't talk about him." She said, scrunching up his face. "For all intents and purposes, he doesn't exist. Forget about him."

Such emotion and finality hung on those words that the usually brash Lucy felt unobliged to question her more. Curious but bogged down by worries of her own, she followed Mic back through the forest without hassle from anything more sinister than a toad that croaked loudly as they stepped near it. It felt odd without Milo, somehow, and Lucy was dwelling on the reasons that she could be so angsty. Family problems? Friend problems? She realised, ashamedly, that she didn't know much about Milo at all. She had left most of her old friends when she had failed her first bout of introductory training, and Lucy had just blundered in and expected attention from her. It must be annoying. Yes, she decided, Milo had finally gotten tired of her and wanted some peace and quiet: she could give her that. For a few days, Lucy had other friends. No problem at all.

Then she wondered about Mic. In the shadow of her older sisters, constantly chased by the success of her younger brother… born noble… maybe she had been harsh on her. Maybe bitchiness was an inherited trait on a dominant allele, and Mic could not have avoided it even if she had tried due to genetic predisposition.

The low rooves of Dolanaar came into sight as they crested a small hill and Lucy visibly sagged, the adrenaline of the discovery receding. Come to think of it, she still hadn't looked at the strange object. "Mic, can I see the shiny thing?"

"Hmm? Oh, sure." She took it from her pocket and handed it over. Lucy studied it carefully- it was a heptagon in shape, pure silver, as Mic had said… but now she was holding it, she suddenly hated it. Forcing herself, she ran a tired finger over the small design etched into the top- it was a language she did not recognize- which meant it could be very many languages, if fact all barring Darnassian… though she recalled some common characters hazily and was about seventy-two percent sure that this was not common, either.

Pocketing it, she felt very confused.

-

"Eat your supper," Tanalia breathed down Milo's neck as she sat, one space apart from Lucy. "Mauling by a timberling is small beer compared to what I'll do to you if you collapsed from malnourishment."

"Not hungry." She said flatly, face contorted in what, to everyone else, was imaginary pain. Lucy knew, by some charm or instinct, that it was not. That there as something perhaps seriously wrong with her friend, and she was, at the moment powerless to prevent anything. Instead, she shifted the recycled nightsaber meat around her bowl expertly, no stupid and complicated knives and forks in the real heart of Night Elf land- chopsticks all the way. She shoveled some down her throat after a few experimental pokes to make sure it was not as animated as the Tuesday special back at Silverwing Grove.

"If you're not hungry, then," said Tanalia dangerously. "All your food for the next week can go to a better cause- say, young Lucelia. She looks odd without those childish little cheeks, hmm?"

"If she doesn't want to eat, leave her alone." Lucy said irritably, half-forgetting who she was talking to.

"Well, if that's your stance…" Tanalia smirked. "What a generous offer! Drinks are on Lucelia tonight!"

Lucy sighed and buried her face in her hands- the last thing she needed was more bad news. Fortunately, that came in the form of the alchemist briskly bursting through the folding screen that partitioned the small dining area from the rest of the inn. Cyndra, Lucy remembered her name was, and she was a lavish night elf of perhaps 500, decked in an orange robe that at this time was covered in moss and the same worrying green liquid from inside the tumours that Milo had gotten a face full of. She caught sight of Mic and Lucy sitting opposite each other and wound her way around the various patrons, her step one of urgency. This did not bode well.

"Sentinel Dawnfeather, Sentinel Everglow." She greeted them formally. Lucy couldn't get used to having the prefix sentinel in front of her name, however cool it was. "I have disturbing news."

"Great," Lucy took a last gulp of milk and turned her full (though not considerable) attention to the worried alchemist. "What were your… uh… findings?"

"I fear that the affliction of the timberlings is spreading rapidly." She said hurriedly. "The riverbank specimens you brought me are tainted, also, and wildlife that feeds on them will digest and become carriers of the blight… they will die, and their remains will pass into the earth, and the infection will spread until possibly the whole of Teldrassil is afflicted.

"Very doom and gloom, then." Mic said unhelpfully. "But how do we stop it?"

"The mutation and agitation of the timberlings is only the effect…" Cyndra said, biting her lip. "I do not know what the cause is, but I suspect that it would be something in the water."

"That would make sense- timberlings live in it, nightsabers drink from it… plants grow with it." Lucy's brain hurt a little but the situation was becoming clearer. It was almost like planning a trick, checking what cold go wrong stopping it before it happened. "Can you make an inoculation?"

"It's not a disease." The alchemist explained. "More of an… affliction. It progresses slowly and leaved questionable evidence. I fear…"

"It's magic." Mic said quietly. "Dark magic."

"But who would want a few timberlings to get angry?" Lucy wondered. "What is the point in that?"

"To annoy us, most likely…" Mic thought of something more sinister. "Maybe to infect us. The Night Elves. We do all sorts with the river water."

"Yes…" Cyndra frowned. "It is our principal source of drinking, bathing and washing water."

"Then we have to do something about it!" Lucy said louder than she should have. "Enlist the druids or the priestesses or something… it's bigger than us now."

Mic shook her head sadly. "My brother- the Emissary one- he used to tell me about the leadership of the Night Elves. Fandral and Tyrande are far too busy with invasions and suchlike to worry about the hunch of two junior sentinels and one alchemist."

"Bureaucracy." Cyndra sighed, looking old. "Well, I don't think it'll kill us any time soon, if nobody has felt the effects yet. We'd better sleep on it."

Lucy looked doubtful but kept that to herself. No use in prodding sleeping nightsabers. Looking at the remains of her cold food, she suddenly felt, like Milo, not hungry at all.

-

That night Lucy could hear nothing but the cries of pain that apparently didn't exist.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Sorry this was ages coming. I've been taking some GCSE modules and slacking, but I am trying with Lucy D. This chappy is a bit short but I wanted to get something out. I can resume writing in about a week when the pressure from January modules for my science courses fades.

The Infamous Lucelia Dawnfeather & Co

Chapter 7

Progress was excruciatingly slow after that scarily different day- almost a week passed Lucy by and she blinked, wondering how she'd lost those 168 hours of her life.

Grimacing, she realized that time had slipped away because she no longer cared about it, and she knew why that was. Days were excruciatingly dull, fuelled by nothing but necessity for her.

Milo wouldn't come near her.

Or anyone, for that matter.

She sat, eyes dull, at meals- she walked with a barely-hidden limp and a new malice behind her usually soft eyes. Lucy wanted to talk to her, to ask her what was going on- but then she couldn't. She had the empathy of C'Thun on a bad Monday morning.

Many of her morning duties were completed alone, or with Mic- she did the Inn's washing up from last week, watered most of the lanterns along the roads from Shadowglen to Darnassus (those things wilted like crazy with the onset of winter), and on one odd Thursday, delivered a baby boy into the world. Her life was… varied, to say the least, if not suffering from the void that Milo had created when she suddenly stopped talking.

Lucy had asked herself a couple of times why this could be- she went over everything she'd done, said, even thought, in the last week, and could find nothing – _nothing_- that could warrant such a reaction. She had ruled PMS out and was moving onto more dangerous and ludicrous theories- the principal guess of which was possession. Lucy wasn't stupid (well, she was, but that's beside the point) and she knew such things were possible. Demons existed, undead were very alive, as were all number of humans and such who would do such a thing. Then she wondered why. Then her head hurt and she put down the trowel with which she was weeding the inn's upstairs bedroom, slumping against the wall and muttering to herself. Life was boring and complicated and nasty.

This, of course, only served to cheer Tanalia up.

"Miss Dawnfeather!" She began a diatribe, but Lucy was already back to weeding. She did a double take and rubbed her eyes, seeing only the junior sentinel with her trowel and her chain-mail gloves in case the weeds protested. Deciding it was paranoia, she continued her rounds, leaving Lucy to return to her stationary position. From the flask sitting on the bedside table, she took a sip of water and grimaced. Teldrassil water was always nasty tasting, but was supposed to have a whole load of vitamins that were better for you. Then again, these days, most rivers and water sources were being tainted/dammed up/shut off/used to fuel techno-bases of world domination nowadays.

Then it caught her. Tainted water supply. How else would the timberlings be so narky all of a sudden?

If timberlings could get narky, so could elves…

Milo.

-

With her newfound secret knowledge, Lucy felt urgency like never before. Everything she did was full of vigor borne not of enthusiasm but gnawing worry, despite what Tanalia might think. The onset of darkness came too slowly for her liking, the blanket of twilight descending at an agonizing pace. When she was done with her chores for the day, Lucy stomped into the Sentinel's barracks and furiously pulled her armour off. She didn't have night watch (which was boring and unpleasant at best) and didn't need the jangling of chainmail and the rustling of stiff leather. Dressed in a simple standard-issue shirt and trousers make of slightly worn linen, she felt very alone, walking out into the humid night. She looked down at her feet as she took the now-familiar paths around Dolanaar, heading for the inn around the back way where she was sure nobody would bother her.

"Sentinel Dawnfeather?" Came a soft voice from her left. Startled, Lucy looked into the shrubbery and saw a large nightsaber with darting, silver eyes staring at her. "Lucy."

It was talking.

Lucy's mind caught up and she realized that the cat was a druid. Majestic and lean, the druid's tousled fur was a grayish-blue shade with greens peppered about. With a growl and a perplexing crunch, the cat rose up on its hind legs and became a man in a simple robe.

"Lucy." He said, almost imploringly. "Long time no see."

By the stars, it was Iri.

Lucy stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. Two years did a lot to a person. Iridolan was tall and broad, with a carefully trimmed moustache and a scar on his neck that hadn't been there before. His skin looked slightly unhealthy and the dark skin under his eyes told Lucy that he wasn't sleeping well. His hands were trembling.

"Iri." She said slowly, any expectance she had of a romantic rendezvous fading instantly. "What's wrong?"

He looked confused. "After two years? That's the first thing you ask me?"

"Something's wrong." She said simply, totally unaware of how she had come to this conclusion but confident in it nonetheless. "You're a druid… but you look the opposite of in tune with nature."

"My trainer told me to go away and come back when I can get it right." He said tiredly. "You saw me then? That was the first time I've been able to shapeshift in a year. It's killing me, I can't do it, and I don't know why. I went to see Cyndra. She said you had a theory."

Lucy's heart sank. He was here for himself, not for her. Not to check up on her or see how she was settling into life as a sentinel, but to get back in his trainer's good graces. But she had a duty. A binding contract held her to help and night elf that needed her, and by the way Iri's eyes dimmed, she guessed her needed her help a lot. "A theory? You mean about the water supply?"

"Yes, how it was affecting the plant life. That it could be magic, something unnatural that could cut a druid off from nature… something evil."

"It is. I don't know where it comes from or how to stop it, but it is magic. It stinks of demons. I have…" she took the little trinket out of her pocket. "Can you read it?"

Iri took it in quivering hands and peered at it, running a finger over the rune etched into it. "_Dháthr_, for _Anger_." He said after a pause. "Demonic, I think. An old dialect. Why do you need to know?"

"We found this at the source of the Wellspring river." Lucy explained. "I don't like it."

He gingerly placed it back into her outstretched palm. "Anger… the furbolgs are angry. The timberlings are angry. It makes sense."

"But if I've taken this away, surely the affliction won't spread anymore?"

Iri chuckled humourlessly. "Have you been living under a rock? Look at Outland. I've been there, Lucy, to look at what the Burning Legion has done. Demons. Bloody Demons, always up our asses- pardon my common- and now here? In our sanctuary? Give me a shot at it, I'll take it out! I'll maul it and claw it and tear it apart!" he turned towards Dolanaar, teeth clenched. "You hear me, Demons! Every last one of you, I'll slash you and tear you a new-"

Lucy put a hand over his mouth, wildly wondering what he was doing. Iridolan struggled, lashing at her, but he was weak with lack of sleep and cut off from nature- Lucy was fresh out of harrowing training and strong. She used his larger frame against him and pushed him against the trunk of a nearby tree, muscles aching- she should work out more. Iri stumbled up, his face scrunched into such a horrible, angry mask that even Lucy could not find it in herself to love him. Her snarled and launched himself at her, crying out and straining and his muscles shifted and bones snapped. He had tried to transform into his big cat form, but had failed and was left halfway there- tufts of hair poking out of his robe, all his bones twisted and broken, his teeth and fingernails cutting into himself, eyes wild and slitted.

"Milo!" Lucy shouted on impulse before realizing that Milo wasn't going to come to save her- she was utterly alone in the darkness outside Dolanaar with Iri, whose mind was poisoned and clouded. The half-shifted figure groaned and hauled itself up, disregarding its physical handicap. Cracking balls of green magic erupted from below Iri's claws, striking Lucy in the thigh with a god-awful sting. She kept her balance but was accosted by more and more spells, hitting her everywhere and pushing her back until she finally overbalanced, whereupon Iri pounced clumsily onto her legs and groaned at the exertion on his broken body.

"Iri!" lucy pleaded with him. "Stop this! I'm not a Demon, I'm Lucy. Lucy Dawnfeather!"

He croaked and looked at her, confused. Lucy felt the cold metal of the demonic trinket in her hand and knew she smelled of demon. She flung the thing as far from herself as she could under the half-shifted Iri's massive bulk.

This did not work very well.

Iridolan snarled through a mouth of jagged fangs, a grimace that sent a raft of shivers ricocheting down Lucy's spine. His bloodshot eyes regarded her for a minute before he gave a whimper, turning away from her and regarding his side. Three arrows stuck out of his side, aimed with precision that could only be credited to Mic the archery fanatic. Lucy sighed in silent appreciation as she lost overview of her situation and basked in the feeling of being saved.

Hands jerked her roughly from underneath Iri's wounded form and she found herself propped up against the side of a glaive that was stuck fast into the squishy Teldrassil soil. A few strands of Mic's dark hair make her nostril twitch. All seemed oddly peaceful.

"The lessons we've learned is _don't drink the water_." Mic said with an air of finality. "We need to haul hairy over there into Dolanaar so that they can put him back together."

Kindness? Compassion towards another sentient being? Lucy was beginning to think that Mic was getting therapy.

-

There were now two people that Lucy desperately wanted to see but couldn't.

The weight of the situation scared her in a way no vision of Tanalia ever had. Milo was infected. Iri was infected. The whole of Dolanaar were on strict orders not to drink the water, but all over, anger was starting to spread. Out of all the races, Night Elves were the most banal, so seeing a shopkeeper swear mercilessly at a boy who didn't have the right change for a muffin was disheartening.

Lucy, having helped discover this, was suddenly expected to be the expert on waterborne demonic taints. This was quite a far cry from the truth, considering she didn't know which was the e and the n went in waterborne. Tanalia was, as predicted, crapping herself, walking around in a circle and scowling. The senior sentinel had fought in wars, slain many in battle, hunted and killed intruders, but this wasn't her specialty. How could you attack waterborne magic with a glaive? Twas impossible.

Lucy thought that perhaps she was going insane as well. There was a strange pressure behind her eyes, which were dry with tiredness, and her limbs all ached. The constant scratching and groaning from the other side of the thick wooden wall kept reminding her of Iri. Why, when things were looking up for her dateablility, did he have to drink the water and go crazy? It wasn't fair.

"We can't just stand around doing nothing." Tanalia decided with outstanding intelligence. "We should… we should get some priests or druids to purify the water, and then to help the affected."

"You've said that twice and each time the answer is the same: they don't believe us. Dolanaar is a very rural settlement detached from the goings-on in Darnassus. They have their own troubles." Mic said bitterly, taking a swig of wine, since water was banned.

"My mum would help, I bet." Lucy said thoughtfully. "And Yerria. She's still in training, I think, though."

"Great, that's two priestesses for a demonic curse powerful enough to turn creatures crazy."

"I'm just trying to help," Lucy said defensively, crossing her arms and huffing up. "I don't see you offering a cluster of the green dragonflight to help us."

"I'm not sure cluster is quite the correct collective noun." Mic replied, bored, "But in all seriousness, this has got to be dealt with. Lucy's little trinket needs to be examined."

"You have spellbreakers from the blue dragonflight under that breastplate as well? Damn, that's awesome."

"Go shag a furbolg, Lucy."

"Nah, you're not my type."

"Immaturity is not getting us anywhere." Tanalia deadpanned, scowling so much that her eyebrows touched in the middle to form a pretty v. "There's no support? We deal with it ourselves. We're sentinels, not dullards. Well, except from Lucy, who manages both, but that's a snide phrase for a happier time."

"We agree this needs to be dealt with." Mic cleared the room. "We need to know exactly what kind of magic this is, then we can find out how to combat it."

"But we have to think about our forces." Lucy said warily, doing quick counting in her head, which took a couple of minutes. "We have eight sentinels in Dolanaar at our disposal. Add skilled townspeople, we have about thirty fighters. Wait… we can pikey newbies from Shadowglen if they're any help, so that means…"

They waited expectantly.

"Maybe a total of forty-five useful people. But warriors can't exactly _fight_ a magical disease."

"Give the girl a prize," Mic rolled her eyes. "But Lucy's right. That's all we can hope for."

There was a lull in speech as the three sentinels stood in the room, thinking. They were currently in the inn, inside the actual room that Lucy had scrubbed down earlier. Iri was locked in the room next to them which was conveniently enclosed in an anti-magic bubble to contain rowdy druids and priests after they had a few too many to drink and started shooting off balls of ouch.

"We need to get Cyndra to help us test the water, then maybe Denalan, the weirdo by the lake. He was looking into something like this, wasn't he?" Lucy said after a pause. "When and if they find out the nature of the problem, we can search for the right type of people to combat it. Savvy?"

"Why, I do think the girl said something sensible." Tanalia looked genuinely shocked. "It sounds shockingly wrong coming from my mouth, but I agree with Miss Dawnfeather."

"Grr." Mic, annoyed, sighed. "I suppose so. Just don't expect me to do anything that the others don't, mkay?"

"Sissy."

"Whelp."

"I have seriously had it up to her with you, Mic." Lucy said angrily. "Can't you just get off your pedestal and help for once? It's not about being the best, it's playing with the team."

"Go play with your kitty then," Mic said snidely, walking at the door. "He's very excited, from what I can hear."

"If you hadn't have _shot_ him, he wouldn't be so angry." Lucy snapped back.

"If I hadn't shot him, you'd be cat food."

"You never change."

Mic shrugged as though Lucy held no importance. "Better to remain constant than to coruscate all over the place. And yes, I used coruscate to piss in your gnome-e-ohs."

"Toss off." Lucy said angrily. "Seriously, if you're not going to help you might as well drink the water 'till it comes out of your arse and you start snarling. That is if the stick stuck up there doesn't get in the way. With any luck, you'll explode."

Mic left quietly.

"Lucy, you are infallibly stupid," Tanalia observed deftly. "She's the best in your squad."

"There's too much pressure!" Lucy said angrily. "I don't want to be asked questions. I don't want to be a leader. I want to put my feet up and watch this happen with a bowl of ice-cream."

"Well that's not going to happen, idiot." Tanalia became suddenly very authoritative again. "You're here, whether you like it or not. You found this out, and without that we'd be in the dark about the taint. But this does not mean you can slack off now."

Her voice became very quiet, and Lucy thougt she even saw a glimmer of passion in there. "Milo could die."

"No." Lucy denied the unpleasant fact very quietly. "She couldn't. She's just ill."

"Go visit her. Go see the damage this is doing. _Then_, maybe, you'll appreciate the gravity of the situation." With a swish of her tabard, Tanalia followed Mic down the stairs, leaving Lucy alone to wonder why everyone was walking away from her.

After a while, she gathered the resolve to leave Iri in the room and walked over to the Sentinel's quarters. It was pitch-dark, so the sentinels not on night watch were going to bed, but she had to get something. From her pack she pulled the demonic object that she had found in the river. She wanted to see her best friend, but she also wanted to test a theory.

Since yesterday, Mic was in Cyndra's house, in a magically sealed room, laid out on a bed. She was dark darker than Lucy remembered her. Her sheets had been taken away as she kept soiling them.

"Milo?" She asked shakily, but the girl didn't look at her. Her skin was covered in a sheen of unhealthy sweat and she was quivering slightly with pain, but this did not fool Lucy. She had already mauled on visitor. "Milo, I have a present."

Lucy held up the trinket and Milo's gaze snapped to it as though the two ends were polarized. Lucy moved the trinket around; surprised that Milo followed it with dull eyes. You could always tell when an elf was ill- the glow left their eyes. It was pitiful to see Milo's glowing orange orbs reduced to blank, boring things incapable of a proper gaze. Lucy moved closer slowly, very aware that she had Milo's undivided attention.

The bedcovers were off and she got a full-on view of the wound that the timberling had given her when the world came back into focus. The slash was from the top of her thigh to the knee, slightly jagged at the bottom. The most worrying thing was that it had not closed. From it oozed blood and the same dark-green substance that the tumors has spurted when squeezed.

Lucy, while not a medic, knew that this was not good.

She got so interested in staring at the mess that she didn't react fast enough when Milo launched herself from the bed and snatched the trinket from her hand. Scolding herself, Lucy backed off, observing the effect. Unlike Iri, who had tried to destroy the trinket, Milo was looking at it critically. In her hands, the dull silver glowed a worrying green. The scent of burning umber and flesh filled the room, the stink of demon. "This is…"

Hearing Milo's voice for the first time in however long gave her a surge of hope. Maybe she would pull through. Maybe there was a chance. "What is it, Milo?"

"It… it's pretty. Can I keep it?"

"Err…" Lucy scratched her head. "For a bit, but I need some people to look at it."

"They'll find nothing." Milo said nonchalantly. "I'm glad you came to visit me, Lucy."

"I should have sooner," Lucy said awkwardly, not quite knowing where she stood. "Are you okay, Milo?"

Milo shook her head. "It hurts. People believe me now, but it hurts so much worse. I doesn't end. It just keeps rowing and growing. I pulled it out, once. It regrew in a day. I'm going to die."

"Don't say that!" Lucy said indignantly. "You're not going to die, silly. We're going to find the cause, kill it and get the cure."

"Really detailed plan." The sliver of a smile flashed across her face so fast that Lucy barely knew it was there. "I didn't think I'd be so young, but I suppose I've had an okay run. I'm glad I met you, Lucy. And Cerianne, and Mic and Ilyeri and Ken and Deri and even Tanalia. I'm glad I became a sentinel."

"Don't get like that." Lucy said sternly. "Everything will turn out fine and we'll be moving into a better tent before you know it."

Milo snorted. She looked Lucy in the eye and vomited violently, black and green liquid dribbling down her nightgown. "Maybe you. Not much left for me to do but hurt."

"Milo!" Lucy said furiously. "Shut up! Keep going!"

Milo shook her head sadly again, looking tired.

"It hurts so bad, Lucy."

-


End file.
